


Talent Night

by Hazama_d20



Series: Three note chords [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Character Death, Do I call it a death if they don't actually die?, Gen, How do I tag?, I feel like that's an age old question in this fandom, I have headcannons, Multipart series, No Reality Trip, No Season 3, Slow Burn, Why is Tucker the first main character to really swear?, no shipping YET, what do i tag?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:09:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26225452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazama_d20/pseuds/Hazama_d20
Summary: The school needs some people to join the talent show, Danny needs a LOT of extra credit, and Ember wants a day in the living world without a fight. Seems like they can all help each other out.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Sam Manson, Ember McLain & Danny Fenton
Series: Three note chords [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904782
Comments: 25
Kudos: 142





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First of a multi-part series that ignores season 3. Shout outs to aniura for helping me with this!

"Mister Fenton, a word, if you will?" The demand, phrased as a request, stopped Daniel Fenton in his tracks. He turned towards the school's vice-principal, who had stopped him before the fifteen-year-old could leave English. Danny looked up at the overworked teacher and tried to think of what reason he would have had to stop him.

_ I got my homework done in time today, and for once, the ghosts are leaving me alone. I don't think I fell asleep in any class... _

A girl wearing all black and purple lipstick put a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay, Danny. Tucker and I can wait outside for you."

His two friends looked like complete opposites of each other. While the girl’s skin was extremely pale from avoiding the sun and the contrast from her dark clothes, his other friend had dark mocha-colored skin with splashes of bright clothing. He smiled and patted Danny on the back as he rushed out of the room. "Yeah, good luck, man!"

Danny smiled. "Thanks, Sam." Danny waited until his two friends - his only friends - at the school left the room. He then turned toward his teacher. "Can I help you with something, Mister Lancer?"

The teacher sighed. "Mister Fenton, to be frank, yes. The school talent show is coming up soon, and it seems that not enough students are interested in taking part."

Danny blinked. "Wait, what? Really? But Jazz made it sound like the talent show was one of the biggest things at this school."

"Yes, well," the man rubbed his balding head, trying to stave off a stress-induced headache. "That was before ghost attacks became a common event here."

Danny frowned, beginning to feel guilty. It was his fault that he fixed his parents' machine to view ghosts, and now they were coming out in droves. "Uh... no offense, Mister Lancer, but how is this any different from the school football games?"

Lancer raised an eyebrow. "Do you know what night the talent show is slated for?"

"Uhh... like a month from now?" Danny answered, wincing at his own indecision. Jazz was excited for the talent show this year, even if she wasn't going to be in it, and his parents were too. It's just when he spent every night fighting for his life to stop rampaging ghosts from attacking people, the school talent show didn't seem like even a real footnote in his life.

"Yes," Lancer said, narrowing his eyes and beginning to loom over Daniel. "April 30th. Do you know what else is on that night?"

Danny blinked. "Ah, no?"

"Hm... well, I hope you'll be able to answer the other history questions better when I'm grading those papers tonight," Lancer stated in disapproval. He let out a sigh. "It's Walpurgis night, which in German folklore was a night when witches would meet on a mountain to dance and sing with the devil himself. Ghost attacks are on the rise, and the school event happens to land on a pagan holiday. I know your math isn't great, but I think you can do this one."

Danny shifted his pack. "I'm trying, okay?" He folded his arms. "Why doesn't the school just change what night it's on?"

Lancer's shoulders fell, and his gaze went to the ground. "Mister Fenton, it may seem like us adults have all the power in the world, but there are things that make that difficult." He folded his hands behind his back. "The next night is a big sports event out of town, and it may surprise you that the constant damage from ghost attacks to this school doesn't just get magically fixed every time it happens. We have to pay for it. The school events, like our sports teams, and our talent show are paying for our school necessities, and-"

Danny straightened, and his shoulders went back. "What do you need, Mister Lancer?"

The vice-principal jumped at the confidence in Danny's voice. He looked into Daniel's eyes and smiled. "Well, Mister Fenton, what I need is another entrant in the school talent show, and if I'm allowed to give a little extra credit to our football players to make sure that they aren't suspended from football for their grades, I'm sure I can give you a little extra to bring your grades up a bit."

Danny broke out into a smile. "Really? That'd be awesome!" He frowned. "What kind of things go into the talent show? I don't feel like I really have any talent worth showing."

Mister Lancer put a hand on Danny's shoulder. "As long as it's not dangerous, anything goes. And I'm certain you have something to show." He squeezed Danny's shoulder and then let go. "You're a good kid, Mister Fenton. You agreed to help before I offered anything." The vice-principal walked over to the door and opened it, letting Danny's two friends fall into the room. "You three are free to go, and Mister Fenton, if you can get anyone else to sign up, I'm sure we can reach an agreement."

Danny's friends looked up from the ground, Sam waving from on top of Tucker. Tucker let out a groan as Sam shifted her weight off of him. He sat up slightly and adjusted his beret. "Danny, Mister Lancer, hey, funny thing these doors..."

"For our sake, I hope Tucker isn't planning on doing an acting gig," Lancer said, stepping around the teens.

The two of them stood up and looked at Danny. "Danny, what was that about?"

Danny groaned. "The school talent show is on a pagan holiday. Word apparently has gotten out, and everyone is worried about doing the talent show on the same night."

Sam folded her arms. "And this affects us how?"

"Mister Lancer asked me to volunteer. He said that it's a big deal and would help pay for the repairs from the ghost attacks..."

"He wants us, the certified weirdo trio of the school, to participate in the school talent show? That sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen," Sam stated dryly.

"Eh, probably should anyways," Tucker said, shrugging and pulling out his phone as he began to search the web. "Let's face it, there's a ninety percent chance that they're right a ghost is going to show up at the talent show, aaaaannndddd the odds just bumped to ninety-five."

Danny shrugged. "He also said I'd get some extra credit for it."

"Oh, was that what he was talking about with the agreement thing?" Sam said, raising an eyebrow. "Bribery?"

Danny smiled. "Hey, for once, it's in my favor. I'm all for it."

Tucker gave him a thumbs up. "Sounds good to me! So... what are we doing?"

Danny frowned. "I was hoping you'd have ideas."

Sam patted Danny on the shoulder. "I'm sure we can think of something. Come on, let's go get some food and brainstorm."

Danny stiffened, just barely, but his friends caught it. They gave him concerned glances. At a shake of his head, they relaxed. “Where do we want to grab food? There’s that vegan place on Peeves street?” The statement came out more as a question.

Sam smiled and gently nudged him with her hip. “You two took me there yesterday, I’m fine with Nasty Burger. Come on, I’ll buy you a heart attack combo.”

Danny chuckled weakly and rubbed the back of his head. "Okay, that sounds awesome. I've gotten a decent night's sleep and I'm ahead on my homework for a change." Today was going great.

* * *

Today was going terrible. The ghost known as Ember McLain was forced to hide from two men in white suits, a set of government-funded ghost hunters known as the Guys in White. They weren't great at their jobs, especially compared to the other ghost hunters in the town, but they were well funded and persistent in ways the others weren't.

The Red Huntress at least tried to avoid property damage, and if you knew where and when to fight her, she might have to run before she could do any real damage to you. The Fentons weren’t much easier to deal with. Jack Fenton may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he did have an instinct most didn't, and for every deficiency he had, his wife covered for it in triple. The woman was an absolute beast, and every ghost that haunted Amity Park knew not to mess with her if they could avoid it.

And the less said about the ghost turned local superhero, Danny Phantom, aka Danny Fenton, the better. The others had never captured any of the powerful ghosts such as Ember, but Danny Phantom had done it repeatedly.

_ Though it looks like those dipsticks are going to finally get a notch in their bedpost worth having, _ Ember thought to herself as she bit back a wince. She pressed a hand against her shoulder. Her shirt burnt and melted into the ectoplasm that comprised her body. Even though every bit of her was ectoplasm, it still, unfortunately for her right now, followed the rules that a normal body had to follow. Which meant a blindsiding shot from a laser, designed to make her skin burst like rotten fruit smashed against the ground, hurt like hell.

"Signal is coming from over here."

Ember jumped, and without thinking about it, took off to start flying. She kept low to the ground. Her old human nature was still kicking in and making her want to avoid flying directly at walls. She didn't know if she would have been capable of controlling herself to pull off the ghostly trick of intangibility anyways.

"There she is!" the other agent shouted.

Ember growled as lasers blasted all around her. One struck her leg, and she screamed as she came crashing down to the ground. She scrambled to her feet, or rather she tried to. She glanced down at her leg and saw the ectoplasm that substituted for her bones visible through her destroyed legs. She looked up and saw where she had landed.

A giant sign saying "Nasty Burger" loomed over her.

"There, we've downed her! Get the ecto containment devices!" Ember looked behind her and saw the two guys in white running up to her. One of them opened up what appeared to be a small thermos, and Ember couldn't help it.

"No! Get away from me!" she screamed as she attempted to crawl away from the hunters.

"No can do, no way we're letting ecto scum like you run free."

Ember turned to glare back at them. "I wasn't even doing anything! And I have a name! Use it!"

"That's what they all say. Let's bag it and tag it."

The next thing Ember knew was a world of white as she started getting sucked into the thermos. Almost nothing was visible outside the energy that was absorbing her. Through the diner's windows, she could barely make out the shapes of the humans watching her get captured, though she was able to see one pair of icy blue eyes.

* * *

Inside the diner, Danny stared out the window while talking to his friends. "I can't believe it. The Guys in White actually caught a ghost!"

Sam put a hand on Danny's shoulder, easily ignoring the chill that followed him. "I'm guessing we're going to have to put a pin in this brainstorming thing, huh?"

Danny turned to Sam and raised an eyebrow, ignoring the Guys in White as they gave themselves high fives. "What, why?"

Sam dragged him down back into sitting in the chair. "I thought you'd run off to go save her."

Danny blinked. "What? Why? She'd leave me there in a heartbeat."

Sam shrugged. "I mean, yeah, it's the Guys in White. They've probably got a whole list of experiments they want to run on her as they dissect her."

Tucker held up a finger. "Actually, it's vivisect. Dissect is for dead things, vivisect is when they're alive while you do it."

Sam glared at Tucker. "Really not helping, Tucker."

Tucker grumbled, "Well, I know someone who isn't going to be passing the vocab test next Tuesday."

Danny groaned. "Really, you guys are guilt-tripping me over this?"

Sam blinked. "What? No! I'm not trying to guilt-trip you! I don't know what they're going to do to her in there, and I don't want them doing that to you!"

Danny's forehead hit the table and he groaned loudly. He turned and looked toward the kitchen with a frown. "Dang it. I gotta go chase them down. I don't know where their base is."

Tucker tapped away at his phone. "It's the one outside of town off of I-94. They wouldn't risk the cops being called on their base while testing on one of the human-like ghosts in their base at the docks. Besides, nothing they've shipped to the dock site was for vivisection and experimentation."

Danny looked at Tucker without raising his head from the table. "You know where the secret government bases are in our town?"

Tucker looked up from his phone for a minute. "Yeah, you aren't the only one worried about what would happen if they caught a ghost and dragged them in there."

"Granted, we thought it would be us running in to save your clone, Ellie," Sam said with a shrug. "But hey, any chance to stick it to the man."

Tucker let out a hum and stole a fry from Danny's plate. "Dude, you better hurry. They drive like your dad."

Danny hesitated. “You guys will be okay?” 

Sam and Tucker glanced at each other. “Uh? Yeah, it’s you we’re gonna be worried about.”

"Sorry, guys," Danny said, sliding past Sam. "I'll make this up to you later!" He ran into the bathroom. Once the door was closed behind him, he closed his eyes for a second, and a glowing white ring appeared around his body. The ring became two as one slid up along his body, and the other went down. As they passed, his clothing was replaced with a black jumpsuit with a white belt, boots, and gloves. His chest had a stylized white D on it with a black cut out P.

He looked up at the ceiling and raised his hands, and his body lifted off the ground like a puppet on strings as he began to levitate and fly upward. He phased through the ceiling as a ghost and scanned the streets below. His head snapped to focus on everything that caught his eye from a hundred feet in the air. It didn't take long for him to see a white car cutting off people as it sped out of the city. Danny took off and began following it at a distance.

The car rolled up to a warehouse, and Danny watched as the two operatives got out of the vehicle. His head lolled to the side as he eyed the warehouse. "Smaller than I expected," he mused to himself. He dropped to the ground, way faster than gravity itself would have dragged him back down to Earth.

He stayed floating above the ground by a few inches but flew forward rapidly through the air before coming to a stop by the side of the car. He thought to himself for a moment before reaching into the hood, his hand passing through with no resistance. He rummaged around in the engine of the car a bit before drawing his hand out. He held a belt and a few gears in his hands, which he then proceeded to crush with a glowing fist.

_ That might slow them down when I book it out of here.  _ Danny thought to himself. He dusted his hands of the ruined metal and plastic and flew towards the warehouse itself. He took a breath into unfilling lungs and turned invisible. He then stuck his head through the wall of the warehouse and frowned.  _ Of course, it's not the Guys in White if it's not overkill. _

In the center of the warehouse was a single elevator bank, and surrounding the elevator were ten soldiers wearing all white and carrying laser weapons. Fortunately for Danny, and every ghost in existence, detecting an intangible and invisible ghost was nearly impossible without specialized equipment. The same could be said about keeping a ghost out.

And Danny had a lot of practice avoiding detection. Danny flew past all of them and flew down the elevator shaft.

* * *

Ember couldn't help but let out a relieved sigh when she was released from the thermos. The sigh immediately turned into a scream when she felt a shock run up her spine. She turned and reached for her guitar to find it wasn't next to her anymore. She glared at the two operatives. "What the hell did you just do?"

The agent closest to her held up what looked like an oversized tuning fork. "Like it? It's called the Plasmius Maximus. Guaranteed to short out the powers of a ghost for three hours. Costs literally my entire salary for a year, but worth every penny."

Ember attempted to reach up to feel her hair, but she winced and looked down to see that the wound on her shoulder was still dripping ectoplasm. She shook her head, trying to check her hair. The flaming ponytail that indicated how much power she had available was utterly gone.

"Now then, gentlemen, your test subject awaits."

Ember tried to stand and fight as four scientists wearing full body protection equipment came into the room. Before she could even get anywhere close to upright, she collapsed again as the wound on her leg reminded her that there was a reason she was captured.

"You've damaged the subject severely," one scientist noted.

"Had to capture it somehow," the agent snapped.

"Oh, no, that was not a complaint," the scientist defended. "The blaster appears to be working excellently. How was the aim?"

"Could be better," the agent admitted. "Barrel size made up for it, though."

"Excellent. We'll get plenty of opportunities to test new weapons on this one."

Ember growled at the scientists, "I have a name! It's Ember McLain! Remember it!"

"Cute, it thinks it's people," the scientist scoffed. He quickly grabbed Ember's hand and latched it to a shackle hanging from the ceiling. Another scientist did the same with Ember's wounded arm. After confirming she was secure, they stepped back and picked up a remote. The shackles started raising, and Ember refused to scream when pain rippled through her body as she hung from the ceiling. Instead, she angrily glared at the humans in front of her.

The scientist turned to the others. "Biological study for it, or weapons study?"

The field agent chimed in, "Weapons. Better weapons mean more chances for study."

"Hmm... good point, but biological studies might mean more complete captures," the scientist mused. After a moment, he demanded, "Scalpel."

Suddenly the alarms went off. "An intruder?" The field agents looked at each other. "Who'd be stupid enough to break in here?" one of them said with a grumble. 

The two agents looked at the scientists. "You'll need to put this on hold."

"Damn it," a scientist spat. Ember couldn't help but relax when she saw them put the scalpel down on a table in the corner she hadn't noticed before. Everyone left her alone in the room, powerless to do anything.

Ember dangled angrily but helplessly, silently cursing Kitty. When Ember had told her she had wanted a few days in the world of the living without fighting, Kitty suggested that she ask Danny about it. Kitty had apparently begged Danny to let her and Johnny have one day out in the real world for a joy ride. Once they both gave several promises and solemn oaths to not cause problems, he had let them do it. The appeal of having one day on Earth again without fighting was worth asking. But before she could find the teen, the Guys in White had jumped her.

Ember bit her lip and tried to draw on the feelings of people chanting her name. Someone somewhere was listening to her music, she knew that for a fact. Still, nothing came to her. At this moment, she might as well have been a human again.

The door opened slowly, and Ember tensed as someone walked in wearing completely white personal protection equipment. She looked down at them and sneered, "Aren't you a little short to be working for the Guys in White?"

The scientist stopped. "Excuse me for not hitting my second growth spurt yet!" He paused and then barely above a whisper stated, "Oh, god, Ember."

Ember stared at him. "Phantom, what the-"

He rushed forward and wrapped a hand over her mouth. "Quiet!" 

She glared at him. She was at least thankful he had the sense of mind to steady her body, keeping her from swaying and putting any more pain on her wounds. He looked around and saw the remote on the table for lowering her cuffs. He grabbed it, then dragged it over to her.

"What are you doing?" she whispered as he hooked her legs under his arm.

"Getting you out of here," he whispered back. He got a shoulder under Ember's wounded arm and pressed a button on the remote. The cuffs came off, and she dropped like dead weight into his arms. She grunted in pain and clutched at her wound on her arm. "Any other injuries I need to know before we fly out of here?"

Ember bit her lip. "I can't fly right now."

"What? Why?" Danny asked as he laid her on the ground. Ember winced and tried to sit up, but he gently put pressure on her to keep still. Danny reached for his waist and patted around for a second. He looked down, and she could see his shoulders slump. He reached up and began taking off the equipment. Once back in only his own hazmat suit, he stuck his hand into a pocket and pulled out several palm-sized bandages, and a container that looked like an asthma inhaler.

"They hit me with something," Ember growled. "Said it was the Plasmius something or other."

Danny stopped what he was doing and looked up at her. "Plasmius Maximus?"

"Yeah, that's it. You run into it before?"

"Someone's been selling ghost tech to the government," Danny grumbled. He unwrapped the bandages and folded them out, and they turned into large bandages the size of printer paper. "This is going to sting like crazy, but you should start healing faster, assuming that you're healing isn't completely shorted out."

"Real comforting, dipstick," Ember snapped as he spritzed whatever was in the inhaler onto her leg. She winced, but it didn't hurt. "That... that didn't hurt. Should it have?" she asked worriedly.

"Haven't used it on a full ghost before. It might be my human part that doesn't like it," Danny offered, placing the large bandage over her wound. He turned toward her shoulder and winced. "Umm..."

"Dipstick, if you're going to give me some-"

"Alright, alright," Danny stated, beginning to spray the medicine into her wounds on her chest. Once he was satisfied that enough of the spray was applied, he placed the bandage on her chest.

"I still reserve the right to smack you once we get out of here for touching me, though," Ember joked. She looked toward the door, thankful that no one had come through yet. "Please tell me you have a plan."

"Well... I did have one."

"Which was?"

"Sneak in, find you, release you, we go invisible and fly out."

Ember stared at him. "Tell me you're joking."

Danny winced. "I'm known for joking, but not for thinking things through."

Ember growled, "Well, great. Looks like I at least get to die again comforted by knowing you'll be joining me soon enough." She tried to sit up again, but moving put a strain on her wounds. She fell back onto the ground, trying not to scream.

"I've been through worse," Danny muttered, tucking an arm under her head and another under her legs.

"What the hell are you doing, dipstick?" Ember tried to snap, but the pain through her wounds made it more of a hiss.

"Picking you up," Danny said, as he did just that, "and getting us out of here." Danny took a moment and Ember felt him make her invisible when a wave passed over her body, chilling her. She looked at Danny, able to see him as part of the same invisibility field they were in. The sensation of being in his arms and under his power instead of her own was deeply uncomfortable. Still, she knew she wasn't in a position to complain.

Ember wanted to say more, but as he moved toward the door, she realized now wasn't a good time. She even held back her urge to grumble. Instead, she was forced to act helpless while he carried her in trembling arms.

Ember blinked a few times.  _ Wait, trembling?  _ She looked at the hands holding her and saw that, yes, he was definitely shaking.  _ What the hell? Is he scared? Then why the hell did he go running into a military base? _

Ember glanced back and, seeing the scalpel on the table, decided that she was better off not asking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first part of a multi-part series. Originally it was going to be one work, but for my own sanity I'm breaking it up into parts. This will eventually be a Danny/Ember/Sam fic but the first four parts (out of a planned nine) won't actually have any relationships other than friendship, and each part is a complete story in and of itself. I started writing this back in January as part of a need to see some more Danny/Ember fanfics, since there were only a handful of fics I could find.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny should know it's a lot easier to get into trouble than out of it.

Danny resisted the temptation to chew on his lip as he walked silently through the hallways. He could feel Ember's questioning stare on his face as they moved. Looking up and down the hall and seeing that no one was coming, he explained, "I've never had to fly carrying someone, but I know I'm slower. I triggered the alarms when I started flying, and I don’t know what’s above us except a LOT of guards. But I flew through the elevator bank with no issues."

Ember's eyes widened as she realized why he wasn’t flying. "Just... let's be quiet then," she whispered.

Danny nodded and continued walking, his own footsteps sounding unbearably loud to him. It would only be a matter of time before the Guys in White realized he was there and descended on them. When he was sneaking in just a few moments ago, he had made an assumption. Since they hadn't noticed him on the surface in his ghost form, it seemed they didn't have the kind of sensors that could detect him. 

That was apparently false. As soon as he entered the base proper, the alarms went off. He'd gotten lucky and had been able to find the full bodysuit and then go human. His human form didn't set off most ghost detectors. Which was great for him, since his parents’ more passive devices would have made his sort of afterlife very short.

His thoughts were rambling. He really should focus. He hadn't lied to Ember; he had definitely gotten out of worse situations. That being said, the last time things were this bad things had gone so far sideways he had been trapped ten years in the future. He was completely deep in enemy territory, who had sensors that could sound the alarm if he tried to fly out. If he could get to the elevator bank, they should be safe.

And now he was thinking about vivisection again. Great.

_ Oh hey, _ he thought to himself,  _ I guess I will pass that test after all. _

"You need a break, dipstick?" Ember whispered. Her breath chilled his neck and made him jump just as much as her voice.

She let out a gasp of pain as his grip on her tightened. He looked down and saw his hands shaking. He relaxed them a bit and shook his head. "No, I'm fine. I’ve got to get you out of here."

He felt Ember shift in his arms, but she didn't say anything.

* * *

Ghosts were no strangers to the different stages of grief. Pretty much all of them were stuck in one stage or another. Ember felt she had a good enough read on herself to know when she was currently stuck in a cycle. Right now, she was very much angry; it was the one she liked. Anger was a call to action, and as a ghost, she had options when it came to action.

Except for right now.

She hated herself for how little power she had. She was utterly helpless. She hadn't been this useless since she had been a human. So instead of being the badass that she was, she was stuck relying on Phantom. She was going to owe him a favor after this. She wouldn't let herself be in debt to him for long.

They came to an intersection, and Phantom paused. "Think, Phantom..." he muttered to himself. The trembling in his arms stopped as he thought. Ember prayed to whoever would listen to a ghost that he wasn't lost. If they were, their chances of surviving with their afterlives dropped dramatically.

Footsteps came down the hallway, and Phantom pulled her closer into him. She bit the response she wanted to yell at him down, though it became a lot harder when he shifted his grip on her and hurt her leg.

She looked down at his hands and saw one palm out, fingers splayed. Ready at a moment's notice to fight the humans coming her way. The shaking in his hands became unbearable when they weren't able to grab onto her for stability. She looked up at him. His eyes stared unblinking down the hallway. Sweat dripped down the side of his face, his hair was matted slick and shining under the fluorescent lights. If it weren't for the fact that he was shaking, she would have thought he was gearing up to fight her or any of the other ghosts out there.

_ Or has he always been shaking in his boots when fighting us? _

Two field agents walked down the hallway, holding onto a small device that looked like a small TV with two antennae on it.

Ember let out a gasp upon seeing it. An electromagnetic field device would be able to spot her a mile away. Danny shifted and held her protectively, and suddenly the shaking he had before was gone completely, she might as well have been held by a marble statue. The two agents looked around for a moment, then kept walking.

The two of them were still for what felt like an hour before Phantom let out a quiet breath. "Thank goodness..."

Ember turned to Phantom and whispered to him, "How did they not detect us?"

Phantom jumped again like he had when she whispered to him earlier, but this time his green eyes zeroed in on her with an intense focus. His grip tightened instinctively before he relaxed. "You got zapped with the Plasmius Maximus. Your signature is almost nothing right now, practically human, and I'm not flying or intangible right now. Invisibility doesn't trigger passive scanners unless they're highly tuned."

Ember blinked. "How do you know that?"

Phantom cocked an eyebrow at her. "You know I live with ghost hunters."

Ember chuckled. "Right..."

"Right,” he repeated. Phantom straightened and turned toward the hallway.    
“Okay, let's do this..."

Ember took that as a sign to be quiet again.

* * *

Danny would admit he had trouble telling the field agents apart, but he thought they were from upstairs. Which would be great news for them for a multitude of reasons. The first being that it meant that they were probably pulling agents away from the upstairs, which would be fewer people shooting at them when they flew away. The second was that meant the elevator bank was probably this way, or at least it gave him a good guess.

Ember probably hadn’t noticed, but Danny had listened to his parents lectures enough to recognize anti-ghost construction. Doorways were off-centered, and hallways slightly disjointed. He wouldn’t be surprised if some of the doors in the hallways opened to nothing but another wall, or to a stairwell that didn’t go anywhere. Sarah Winchester’s work was still valued today apparently. 

It took him longer than he'd have liked, as he kept getting lost. He'd never let Ember know about that though, let alone Sam or Tucker, but eventually he found the hallway with the elevator bank.

Unfortunately for him, it had six field agents guarding the door, along with six scientists, who each had a small robot next to them with what looked like a blaster.

Danny resisted the urge to take a deep breath. He didn't need to breathe as a ghost, but it did make him feel better. Instead, he crouched down and tightened his grip on Ember slowly. She seemed to get the hint and reached up with her uninjured hand and hung onto him. He tapped her three times, trying to let her know he'd go on three. He then bobbed once, twice, and when he bobbed the third time, he rushed forward as fast as possible.

Tucker had clocked his fastest as 112 miles per hour while unencumbered a while back. He didn't have the runway to get quite that fast, and Ember wasn't exactly light nor aerodynamic, but by the time the Guys in White had realized that a ghost was rushing them, he was already past them. Danny banked up into the elevator, leaving screeching alarms behind them. He didn't stop until he had flown up into the clouds above the warehouse.

Once there, he paused and dropped his invisibility. "Okay, can't stop now, or they're gonna send planes after us, but we should be good."

"Nice escape. I'd give it a seven out of ten. Not enough beating up the assholes that caught me," Ember commented, relaxing a bit. She looked down. "Also, damn, you're a lot faster than I thought. How the hell do you not catch us all the time?"

"Turning is hard," Danny said with a chuckle. "Let's get you back into the ghost zone, though."

Ember winced and realized she had no defense right now. "Please, not the thermos."

Danny shook his head with enough force to slightly alter their flight path. "Oh, no way. You're way too hurt for that! I don't know what the thermos would do to a ghost with this much damage."

"What, are you planning on just carrying me through the portal?" She draped an arm over her forehead dramatically. "Now that you have me in your clutches, you’re just not willing to let go?"

"What?" Danny blinked, then he immediately began to blush. "No! I mean, nothing like that! It's just-"

"Relax, dipstick, I'm giving you crap," Ember scoffed. She looked back the way they came. "Speaking of, why the hell did you do that?"

Danny's face grew hard. "They've almost got me before..." he said before ducking into the clouds themselves. "They told me they wanted to do painful experiments on me. My parents are ghost hunters that tell me all about the experiments they want to run. I couldn't let them do that to you."

Ember frowned. "Yeah, but... why?"

"Why what?"

"Why would you risk yourself?"

Danny looked at her, his brow furrowed. "I... I just told you?"

"But what if you got caught?" Ember said, waving her good arm around. "Or... I don't know. It just doesn't make any sense."

Danny didn't respond for a moment before dropping rapidly to the ground and stopping just above the trees before continuing back to the city. "It was the right thing to do," he answered. "If I didn't do it, no one else would have."

Ember stared at him for a moment, then began to laugh. "Oh man, Baby Pop, you are such a boy scout."

"B-Baby Pop?" Danny sputtered.

"Yeah! You're like the pop music for tweens and that crap. All PG and goody goody."

"I literally just broke into a government facility to rescue you from being torn apart molecule by molecule! I feel like that deserves a little respect!"

"Yeah, but you lost all of it for saying it was the right thing to do," Ember said, sticking her tongue out at him.

"I... uh... also wanted to stick it to the man?"

"Too late, all respect," she made a popping noise with her mouth, "gone."

Danny scoffed and looked forward. Seeing they were close to the city again, he turned them invisible. It disturbed him a little at how easy it was to affect Ember. Usually, everyone had a little bit of resistance to the effort, especially ghosts, but right now, it was like she was an object he was holding, not another person.

He flew her directly to his house and passed through all the floors to his basement, where Danny's parents had built a lab for studying ghosts. Unfortunately for both him and Ember, Jack and Maddie Fenton were in the middle of working on some innovation that would probably come back and bite Danny at some point or another.

He sighed and then went up three floors. "Well, I guess you're gonna have to hang out here for a bit," he said, placing her on his bed and turning human again.

He watched Ember bite her lip and close her eyes for a second. She let out a sigh and looked about the room as she ran her hand through her hair. She looked about his bedroom and shook her hands. Danny’s eyes lingered on the bandages on her chest and leg. The bandages were looking more green than white at this point.

"Hey, Ember, I'm gonna change your bandages. You're... uh... leaking, still."

Ember mechanically looked down at them. "Oh," she said quietly, sounding very small.

Danny started with the one on her leg, mostly because it was easier, and definitely not because he was feeling extremely nervous with a literal rock star on his bed and needing to change the dressing on her chest. He slowly unwrapped the bandage on her leg and let out a sigh of relief when she winced.

"Screw you," she muttered as he inspected the wound.

"If you didn't feel that, something would have been very wrong," Danny stated clinically.

Ember blinked, speechless. "Oh... uh... hmm..." she muttered, trying to think of something to say.

Danny chuckled. "You pick up a few things when you patch yourself up." He glanced up at her and shot her an unamused look. “You know, thanks to you.” He inspected her wound and frowned. "Yeah, you're not absorbing the ectoplasm properly." He reached under his bed and pulled out a first aid kit. He rummaged around and found another inhaler. "Hopefully, the ectoplasm just neutralized."

He put it up next to the wound and looked up at her, hoping that the worry he felt wasn't showing. "This might sting."

"Just do it, Baby Pop."

He sprayed the medicine on her wound, and she didn't even flinch. He licked his lips in concentration and continued to spray, coating every inch of the injury. "Good news is, I've seen worse."

Ember scoffed, "Usually, when people begin with 'Good News,' it's 'cause bad news is coming."

"Bad news," Danny confirmed. "If they did something new with their weapons, it might be the cause of you not healing." He grabbed a roll of bandages and then looked at her pants and slowly began to blush. "Umm..."

Ember blushed too, once she realized what he was thinking. "Oh, hell no."

He reached into the first aid kit and grabbed a set of sheers. "Well, I'm not sure about ghosts, but I know for humans, we don't want anything in the wound if we can help it. So I'm gonna cut that pant leg off."

"That's better than me taking them off," Ember admitted, and let him do it. "How fast does that stuff work for you?" she asked.

Thankful for any distraction from the fact that he was wrapping bandages around Ember's thigh, Danny answered quickly. "Minutes?" Danny offered with a shrug. "Honestly, don't know. By the time I finally get a chance to inspect the bandages, it's usually hours later... But, the pain goes away pretty quick."

Ember shrugged. "Well, like you said, it could be because you are still human?"

"Yeah, that's probably it," Danny allowed. He hoped that was it. He blushed and indicated her chest. "Uh... you should probably lay down for this one."

Ember complied and stared up at the ceiling. She laughed before hissing in pain. "I never knew you were a space nerd," she said, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling.

"Yeah, I wanted to be an astronaut before all this happened," he said, chuckling weakly. "Those are accurate to the night sky in July, by the way."

Ember made a non-commital noise. "Before? What about now?" Danny sprayed his medicine in her chest wound, and she hissed in pain. "Gah! Stings? That hurt almost as much as the blast!"

"Oh, thank goodness," Danny said, feeling some of the stress that had been holding him up just collapse. He leaned against the side of the bed for a minute. He took a deep breath and continued tending to Ember. He remembered she had asked a question. "As for now? Well, I probably can't get into NASA. You have to be smart and have good grades, and well... ghost fighting does not make for a good study session."

Ember smirked. "Could just ignore us?"

"No."

"Worth a shot." 

Danny huffed before carefully bandaging her. He adjusted her shirt so he could better wrap it. 

"Watch it, Baby Pop," Ember warned with a smirk.

"I am!" Danny responded before realizing what that implied. "Uh! I mean, I'm being careful!"

"Uh-huh, sure." When he finished, she sat up. "You still haven't said what you wanted to do when you finish high school."

Danny shrugged. "I'll figure that out if I make it."

Ember looked like he had punched her square in the gut. The kind of punch Dash gave when you weren't expecting it. She looked away and then closed her eyes and bit her lip for a moment before letting out a sigh. "Still no ghost powers."

"Last I checked, it lasted three hours. It's probably been half that time." Danny slapped his forehead. "Crap! I need to tell Tucker and Sam that I'm okay!" he said, scrambling to find his cell. He looked up and saw her playing with her fingers. "Uhh... before that, can I get you anything?"

"Playing host now, are we?" Ember smirked for a moment before she looked away and ran her hand through her hair. "Ummm... any chance you have a guitar around?"

"A guitar?"

"I feel naked without one."

Danny thought for a moment. "One second, I actually might." He jumped up and ran into his sister's room. He seemed to recall her buying a guitar when Ember first appeared and tried to hypnotize everyone into liking her music. It didn't take long to find it in the back of Jazz's closet, next to the bazooka.

He blinked for a moment. "My life is so weird."

He grabbed the guitar and came back into his room. Ember's eyes lit up at the sight of the guitar, and she sat up quickly. "Oh my god, is that one from my merch line?"

Danny laughed. "Yeah, actually, you got my sister into your music and made her want to be just like you for a bit."

"She has good taste," Ember stated, running a hand through her short hair and then making gimme motions to the guitar.

"You hypnotized her into that. She's absolutely tone-deaf."

Ember laughed. "Oh come on, how bad can it be?" She strummed the guitar and winced when it became apparent it was completely out of tune. "Oh, please tell me she left it for too long."

"Nope. She thinks playing is actually relaxing."

Ember looked at Danny with the most sincere look in her eyes that he had ever seen. "I'm sorry."

"You're more sorry that you made my tone-deaf sister start trying to play guitar than for trying to kill me on a regular basis?" Danny asked with a cocked eyebrow, before smirking, "Yeah, that's fair."

Ember laughed and began tuning the guitar, and Danny took out his phone and started texting the group chat.

_ Hey guys, back from the base. I'm fine, Ember's hurt bad. _

Sam was the first to respond.  _ Finally! We were worried. How bad is bad? _

Tucker's text came in a second later.  _ Good to hear from you again. Any chance you stole any cool tech for us to play with? They had some top of the line EMF detection devices installed recently. _

Danny stared at Tucker's response for what felt like a solid minute. Sam figured out a proper response before he did.  _ THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN HELPFUL FOR US TO KNOW EARLIER!!!! _

Danny took a deep breath and started counting to ten. His counting was interrupted when Ember broke his concentration. "What's got you in a tiff?"

Danny took another deep breath. "Tucker, the terrible singer, apparently knew they had the good sensors."

Ember plucked a string on the guitar, and it rang out. "That would have been helpful to know earlier."

"That's what Sam said," Danny muttered before going back to his phone.  _ Regardless of that, Ember is now sporting a few blaster bolts that literally melted her skin. I used the sprays we lifted from my dad, but they weren't working at first. She couldn't feel it. She also got hit by a Plasmius Maximus. _

Tucker responded first this time.  _ Well, the sprays are meant to kick start the healing, but the Plasmius affects a lot of different things. Like, you lose your ghost sense while hit by it. It could be that she didn't feel it cause the Plasmius knocked out a sense. I've wondered if your senses are from your human side, not your ghost one. _

Danny smiled. "Tucker thinks you not feeling the meds at first was from the Plasmius, but they were probably working."

Ember smiled and leaned back against the wall and continued playing. "Phew, so I'm not losing my leg?"

"Hopefully not."

"Good, I don't want to do the pirate metal thing all the time."

Danny chuckled and went back to his phone.  _ You've put a lot of thought into this. _

Tucker responded immediately.  _ Dude, you are the weirdest thing in the world bar none. Of course I'm going to think about it. WHAT EVEN ARE YOU? _

Sam chimed back in.  _ Well, hopefully, it'll knock her out of commission for a while. Though they heal faster in the ghost zone, right? _

_ I dunno. I'll ask,  _ Danny fired off before he turned back to Ember. "Do you guys recover faster in the ghost zone?"

Ember paused in her playing. "I... don't actually know? Don't get enough time in the real world to really find out." She shot him a glare. “You know, thanks to you.” There was a brief pause when a buzz sounded in the room. She pointed at his phone. "Uh... I think they're trying to contact you."

Danny looked down at his phone. He already had six new messages. He responded quickly.  _ My parents are in the lab, and I'm not shoving her in the thermos when she's this bad off. _

He thought for a moment.  _ By the way, Tucker, apparently, Ember has bones if you wanted to add that to your info sheet. They're kind of a weird green color, but that might be the ectoplasm smeared over them. _

His phone was blessedly silent for a moment.

_ Dude. The hell? _

_ I know, right?  _ Danny responded.  _ Anyways, anything on the talent show front? _

Sam responded again.  _ No. Sadly. Anything worth showing would also be showing off ghost powers. Not a good idea. _

Danny sighed and bit the inside of his cheek as he leaned back against the wall, and listened to Ember play her music. He had to admit, even though it was an electric guitar without an amp, it was still really good. She was playing something more mellow than the rock that she usually went with.

Then he got a really stupid idea.

"Hey, Ember, any chance I could ask you a favor?"

"What is it?" Ember asked slowly.

"Can you teach me how to play guitar?"

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a lot to say here. This was originally part of the first chapter, but it had gotten pretty long so I broke it up. Since you made it here, let me say thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asking someone who has hit you in the head with a guitar for guitar lessons is probably not Danny's smartest move. Definitely not the dumbest though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meant to mention this last chapter, but I forgot. I've gotten some help from another writer on here, aniura, who is writing a fic called Just Fourteen. You should check it out of you got the time! Usual notes at the bottom.

Ember stared at Danny in the way only a ghost could. She was completely still; as a ghost she didn't need to breathe. Also, blinking was a concept only required by the living. With those two facts, she was practically a statue. It was a good minute before she finally responded, "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

Danny smiled with all the confidence he could muster. "I was wondering if you could teach me how to play guitar?"

Ember plucked at a string. "So, just to make sure I'm not misunderstanding..." Ember began, her voice cold. "You want me, one of the people who you’ve stated has tried to kill you on multiple occasions, to teach you, the person who has thwarted my plans and ruined me multiple times, the most important thing in my life. Which had kept me sane while I floated through the ghost zone for the past couple of decades before the portal opened."

Danny's grin faltered. "Ah... Yeah, I suppose I am."

Ember eyes narrowed and they glowed in the dim room."What the hell would possess you to ask that?"

Danny rubbed the back of his head. "You want the short version or the long one?"

"Short."

Danny sighed as his shoulders slumped. He waved his hand about in the air as he spoke, "I'm barely passing my classes, and the vice-principal told me that if I was in the talent show, he’d give me some extra credit so I could actually pass."

Ember tilted her head slowly. "So, you just need to play for this talent show?"

"Yeah, it's... on April thirtieth, like over a month-"

"Your school is doing a talent show on Walpurgis night?" Ember cackled.

Danny paled. "Oh god, is it actually a ghost holiday? Please tell me it’s like the Christmas Truce thing?"

Ember cackled even harder.

Danny closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He opened his phone and recorded a few seconds of Ember laughing before asking again, "Ember, please tell me Walpurgis night isn't going to be a nightmare for me."

Ember laughed even harder. "It's even funnier the second time!"

Danny stopped recording and sent it to his group chat. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Oh come on, just once, I'd like things to go my way."

Ember slowly stopped laughing and slowly began to wheeze instead. Her hand went to her wounded shoulder. She growled through gritted teeth. Danny got up to help her, but she shook her head. "Don't bother, Baby Pop. I'm fine, laughing that hard just irritated it." She sighed and leaned back. "Well, to answer your question, yeah, us ghosts LOVE Walpurgis night, fortunately for you, you aren't gonna have to worry about it."

Danny eyed her warily. "Every time one of my enemies has said that, they've tried to kill me right after. You still don't have your ghost powers."

Ember scoffed. "I'm being serious. Come on, summoning the devil to have awesome parties? Baby Pop, it's an entire night of party crashing for ghosts!"

Danny gulped. "And the talent show?"

Ember waved it off. "Unless someone actually tries to summon something at the school, no ghost is going to show up, we got better places to be."

Danny let out a breath he had forgotten he was holding. "Okay, so it's the one night a year I might get a decent night sleep."

Ember grinned and her eyes narrowed as she looked up at Danny; looking like the cat that had caught a canary. "But now that I know about it..."

Danny threw his hands up in the air. "Really?"

Ember brushed some of her hair behind her ear. "But, alright."

"Wait, really? You looked like you wanted to kill me!" Danny shouted.

Ember shook her head. “Nah, if I wanted to kill you, you’d know.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “I just couldn’t believe you had the guts to ask me for guitar lessons.”

He raised a fist in the air. “Yes!”

Ember smirked. "A month isn't long enough to teach you how to play, but I can teach you a couple songs."

Danny paused for a moment, and scratched at the side of his head. "What's the difference?"

Ember rolled her eyes. "I see I have my work cut out for me." She pointed at the floor in front of her. "Come on over, I'll show you."

Danny sat down across from her, and she smiled. She leaned back and crossed her legs. Danny's eyes were drawn to the bandages on her leg. He frowned as he looked at them, they weren't turning green yet, but he remembered how they looked when he got her back from the base. "Those bandages aren't too tight, are they?"

Ember broke out in a wry grin and tilted her head so she looked down at Danny through her eye lashes. "Oh, is that what you were looking at?" She asked with feigned confusion.

Danny felt his cheeks burn. He waved his hands in front of him, as he began to protest, "What? No, I-"

Ember threw her head back and laughed. "Relax, Baby Pop, I'm just teasing you."

Danny groaned and stared at a greenish stain on the ground. The blush had left his face, but his ears remained red. "Look, I've only bandaged myself up. So I know when I did it wrong, it's just I don't want to make it worse."

The room was silent for a moment. Danny slowly looked up at Ember, who was looking at him intently. Her face had fallen a bit, and her lips were pursed. She shook her head. "Like I said, Baby Pop, it's fine." She ran a hand over the bandages on her leg. "I was just teasing..." She shook her head. "Alright, so here, listen to this..." She played a few bars of a song. "Recognize this?"

Danny leaned back. "Yeah, who wouldn't? It's Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi!"

"Good. Powers or not, if you hadn't recognized it, I would have beaned you with this guitar." She said, laughing. She stopped playing and shifted. "Now, listen to this." She began playing again, and Danny couldn't help but lean forward. There was something more interesting in this version. The way she was playing it originally was good, but he really liked how she was playing it now. He wished he had brought the amp from Jazz's room so he could really hear it. Ember smiled, and what little fire she had left in her ponytail fluttered. "You like that, huh?"

"Yeah!" He said brightly. After a moment, he frowned. "I don't know what you did differently, but.."

Ember’s grin grew wider as she snapped a finger and pointed at him. "That's the difference between playing a song and playing the guitar. That second one? It wasn't Livin’ on a Prayer, at least, not a way you'd see it in a music book. I'm playing the same notes, but I'm throwing my own flair on it, adding some extra chords that fit in and making it mine."

Danny slammed a fist into his own palm. "Oh! It's like cheating?"

Ember blinked. "Uh, what?"

"When I copy Tucker's homework, I get the answers right, but when the test comes around, I won't get it right cause I didn't actually learn it."

Ember smirked. "You cheat on your homework, Baby Pop? How scandalous!"

Danny slumped forward. "Come on, it's not like I have time to study between all the ghost attacks!"

"I never said it was a bad thing, Baby Pop," Ember said lowly with a bit of pride. "But yeah, what I'm saying is I can teach you to play a song or two in a month. Easy." She frowned and then strummed the guitar a few times. "Though, can I ask you a favor?"

This time it was Danny's turn to raise an eyebrow at her skeptically. "Uh... maybe?"

Ember looked down at her boots and fiddled with her guitar. "I wanted a night to myself, out in the real world. May third. It was what I came over for today. To work a deal with you like Kitty and Johnny did..."

"Alright," Danny said. The casual agreement was accompanied with a shrug.

Ember blinked. "Just like that?"

Danny smirked. "Well, you are helping me with my talent show problem. So fair's fair."

Ember dropped the guitar into her lap. "Uhhh... did you just forget about the fact you just saved me from a bunch of government spooks, bandaged my wounds, and then let me play your sister's guitar while we waited for you to throw me back into the ghost zone because you didn't want to shove me into your thermos cause of said wounds?"

Danny tilted his head. "Well, I probably wouldn't let Walker play Jazz's guitar, but like, I would have done the same thing for anyone."

Ember groaned and leaned back. "You've got to be kidding me."

Danny laughed. "I'm not! Walker would probably break it!" He stood up and stretched. "One minute, I'm gonna check to see if my parents are out of the lab."

Ember frowned. "If I'm teaching you guitar, why throw me back in right away?"

Danny turned with a raised eyebrow before he remembered. "Oh, right. You said you didn't know. Umm... well, we thought that ghosts would heal better in the ghost zone from injuries." Danny pointed at the medicine still left out from earlier. "The ghost zone basically has aerosolized ectoplasm everywhere, and that's basically what that stuff is."

Ember winced and pressed a hand lightly against her bandages on her chest. "Are you kidding me? That stuff hurts!"

Danny nodded. "Yeah, but that's artificial stuff that my dad made. The natural stuff should be better." When Ember didn't respond, he turned intangible and invisible. "I'll be right back." He dropped through the floor and went down to the basement.

He took one look at the state of the lab and grimaced. Not only were his parents both still working, but they were also refilling their coffee pots. He sighed and went back upstairs before his parents' scanners could pick him up. He went back into his bedroom and became invisible. "Uhhh... well, my parents are gearing up for an all-nighter."

Ember smirked and placed a hand on her heart dramatically. "Oh no, whatever will you do? You can't throw me into the ghost zone!" She stated, voice completely dry.

Danny sighed and sat back down. "Well... You'll tell me if you start hurting?"

Ember stared at Danny with some measure of disappointment. "My god, Baby Pop, are you actually this much of a boy scout?"

Danny frowned. "Excuse me for caring about your health."

Ember rolled her eyes. "Dork." She patted the bed next to her and slowly shifted to the left. "Alright, well, if you wanna wow a crowd to save your grade, might as well start now."

Danny smiled. "Alright," He said. He moved to sit next to Ember and pulled out his phone. "Oh, right, before I forget, I need to tell Tucker and Sam that I figured out my talent show bit." He said, firing off a quick text.  _ Hey guys, I figured out my talent show thing. _

Tucker responded before he could put the phone down.  _ Uh, DUDE! Aren't you more worried about the GHOST THING? _

He typed out another response.  _ It's not an issue. Talked with Ember. I'll explain tomorrow. _ He threw the phone on his nightstand and turned back to Ember. "Sorry about that."

Ember scoffed. "You should be, I don't like waiting." She put the guitar in his lap and then grabbed his left hand. "Alright, so to begin with, you're going to have to hold the guitar right." She said, placing Danny's thumb in the center of the back of the neck and set his fingers lightly on top of the strings. "There."

"And what do I do next?"

"Now? You sit there with your fingers like that for five minutes."

Danny blinked a couple of times. "What?"

Ember narrowed her eyes and snapped, "You asked me to teach you, I'm teaching you." She folded her arms. "One of the important things in playing guitar is your finger positions. So right now, you're building your muscle memory."

Danny flinched at her tone. "Alright! Sorry, it just surprised me."

Ember reached over and fixed his finger position. "This would be a lot easier if I could hypnotize you. I bet twenty hours of hypnotized practice of Cliffs of Dover would get you ready in a snap." Danny opened his mouth and then closed it. Ember smirked. "Cute, you're learning."

Danny frowned and shook his head. "I can't imagine how much you practice."

Ember smirked. "You want me to teach you guitar? You're about to find out."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear this entire series wasn't started by me picturing Ember playing my favorite songs and imagining her playing metal versions of all of them. It's just 60% that... Maybe 70%.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny has made a deal with Ember... now he has to tell his friends about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to aniura for helping me with this chapter and the last one!

The next day, Ember had to suppress a laugh as she watched Tucker and Sam enter Danny's room. The two of them had no clue she was there, and she was waiting with bated breath when they figured it out. Ghosts do love scaring people, after all. It's in their nature. The two of them stopped when they saw the guitar out.

"Danny..." Sam said slowly, "Is that Jazz's guitar?"

Danny shrugged. "I'm borrowing it until the talent show," he said. Ember could tell he was trying to keep a smirk off his face. He still couldn’t help but chuckle. "You guys should have seen the look on Jazz’s face when I told her why."

Sam put down the paper bag she had been carrying by the bed, and then proceeded to sit on the mattress. "Uh... Danny, you've never played an instrument in your life."

Tucker grabbed the chair by his desk and sat in that, spinning it around to lean forward on the back of the chair. "And no offense to your family, but uhh..." Tucker trailed off, looking at Sam as he tried to think how to put it delicately.

Sam folded her arms and cocked an eyebrow at Danny. "What he's saying is your family is tone-deaf. Also, they’re all terrible with music, though Tucker isn't one to talk."

"Well, I know that  _ now _ !" Tucker said, throwing his arms up in the air.

Sam glanced back at Danny, uncrossing her arms. She looked at the guitar and chewed on her lip for a moment before asking, "Are you sure you want to go through with this?"

Danny smirked and reached down, turning on the guitar amp at his feet. "Oh, I think I can do it."

He put his hands to the neck of the guitar, and Ember reached out. She guided his fingers, and Danny suddenly put out a guitar solo that belonged on a triple-platinum metal album. Tucker and Sam both dropped their jaws. Ember finished off the solo for Danny, and he looked at the two of them. "Not too shabby for someone who never picked up a guitar, right?"

Sam blinked, and Ember had to resist cackling at the blush that started to appear on her cheeks. "That...."

Tucker interrupted, throwing his arms out. "What was that?"

Ember decided she had enough of them fawning over Danny and jumped out of her hiding place, which happened to be Danny's body. "Sup, dipsticks."

Tucker let out a girlish scream and fell back out of the chair. Sam, however, jumped up and was ready to fight. "Ember!" she growled.

Danny held up his hands. "Relax, guys! She's helping out."

Sam focused a glare on Danny for a minute, before pulling out a set of what looked like weird earrings from under her skirt. She placed them in her ears. "Danny... why did Ember just jump out of your body?"

"She's helping me practice!" Danny said. His laughter did nothing to appease his friends. 

Sam slapped a hand to her forehead. "Danny, I know you have a massive hero complex, but she's tried to kill you."

Ember narrowed her eyes and folded her arms over her chest. "Hey, technically, I've never tried to kill him," she stated emphatically. "I just hypnotized him into having a crush on you."

Sam focused her glare on Ember again, the angry look ruined by the blush on her cheeks. "That's not much better!" Her gaze lowered for a moment, and Ember couldn't help but shift away when Sam noticed she was heavily injured. "What did the Guys in White do to you?"

Danny growled, which started everyone in the room, especially Ember with how angry he looked. "Enough,” he got out through gritted teeth. Ember followed his gaze to an hourglass on his desk. 

Sam pointed at the bed. "Ember, sit down and let me look at them. Danny is terrible at taking care of injuries."

Ember floated up a bit away from Sam. "Why should I listen to you?"

Danny put a hand on her shoulder. "Actually, Ember, I think you should let her take a look at it. She does know what she's doing when she's patching me up, at least."

Ember snarled at Danny, but he didn't flinch. "Seriously, Baby Pop? It was one thing last night, but I'm back at full power now."

Danny tilted his head forward. "Except you’re not, and you know it."

Tucker finally decided to speak up again. He glanced between the two of them before asking, "’Baby Pop?’"

Ember sighed and sat down on the bed next to where Sam was standing. "Yeah, Baby Pop," Ember stated. "'Cause he's all goody-goody and clean like pop music for tweens."

Danny folded his arms. "I'm not that nice."

Sam smirked. "Danny, two days ago, you helped a grandma across the street."

Danny rolled his eyes. "She was having trouble walking!"

Tucker snickered. "Yeah, cause she was using her cane to try and hit you for menacing society."

"I forgot I was in ghost form!"

Ember snorted, rather unladylike, but she really couldn't care less. "Oh my god, you've got to be kidding me. What, does he help kids get their cats down from trees too?"

"Three times this week," Sam confirmed, "And last Saturday, a kid lost their balloon, and he grabbed it for them."

Ember turned to Danny. "And just when I thought my respect for you couldn't get any lower, Baby Pop," she cackled. Her head snapped to focus on Sam when she knelt down next to her. Sam slowly brought her hands up to the bandage on Ember's leg. "Come on. I don't bite..." Ember said playfully coy. "Much."

Sam glared at Ember, and Ember couldn't help but cackle. The humans made it way too easy. Sam shook her head and began unwrapping the bandages around her leg. Ember didn't think anything of it until the girl let out a hiss. "What the hell?" she muttered.

Ember felt something settle in her chest that she didn't like. She refused to call it fear. "What is it?"

Sam looked up at Ember. "Good news, Danny yesterday told us he could see your bones, and I can't now. So that's something." She reached into her paper bag, pulled out a box of bandages, and grabbed the first aid kit under the bed.

"So, what's the bad news?" Ember said with a glare. 

"You’re still pretty badly damaged." Sam turned to the other ghost in the room. "Did they upgrade the ecto-annihilators?"

Danny shrugged. "I dunno. I just avoid them at all costs."

"Unless said cost is to leave anyone in danger," Tucker joked.

Sam turned toward the medkit and rummaged around through it. "Ember, do you know if stitching helps with ghost injuries?"

Ember shrugged. "I... I have no idea," she said, leaning back. She looked at Danny. "Do you stitch him up?"

Sam nodded. "Sometimes. If there's a bad enough injury and he needs to go human again, but if you don't know, we'll skip that." Sam frowned for a moment and then pulled out a bottle of disinfectant and a set of tweezers. "It looks like Danny didn't bother cleaning it. This might hurt, but I'm gonna get the stuff out of it that I can. I don't actually know if it'll help you, but maybe?"

Ember hissed as Sam slowly began picking pieces of her leggings out of the wounds. She glared at the girl but held her tongue. After a few minutes, and an application of the disinfectant and the medicine that both hurt as much as the blaster shot that initially wounded her, Sam slowly and carefully bandaged her back up. With a relieved sigh, Sam stood up and stretched. Ember glared at her. "Thanks, but... why are you helping?"

Sam shrugged. "I might not like you, doesn't mean I want you to suffer. If this got worse and I could have helped, I would have felt bad."

Ember glanced back at Danny. "See, that's what you're supposed to say if you're not a dweeb."

That brought Danny and Tucker out of their side conversation. Danny huffed and crossed his arms, which wasn't that intimidating to begin with, and with a copy of one of her guitars strapped to him, it was just comical. "Seriously? Are you still on that? What does a guy have to do to get some respect around here?"

Sam raised an eyebrow. "What did he say?"

"It was the right thing to do," Ember said, throwing her head back and laughing.

Sam chuckled fondly. "That's Danny." She pointed at the bed. "Alright, lay down, and I'll take a look at the one on your chest."

Ember sighed and did as she was asked. She had to admit Sam seemed to know what she was doing. It was nice that someone was actually taking care of her instead of her needing to just grin and bear it like she usually would have to. Sam peeled away the bandages and winced slightly. "Danny, come over here and tell me if this is looking better."

Danny walked over and took a look. Ember began to feel crowded. She usually liked attention, but this was weird. Danny was an enemy, Sam, one of his allies, and the two of them were looking at her wounds. Sam put her hand on Ember's other shoulder gently, preventing her from moving.

"Yeah," Danny finally said. "The part by her shoulder is healing faster, though. It's less circular than before."

Sam nodded and reached for the medkit again. "Time for round two."

Ember winced as Sam began to clean the wound. This time, it didn't take as long, but it hurt twice as much. When Sam started to wrap the bandage, Ember smirked. "That wasn't so bad."

Sam smiled. "Yeah, Danny tries not to whine, but you took it like a champ." Sam stood up and dusted off her knees and walked over to Danny. She whispered to him, "Danny, when are we planning on putting her in the ghost zone?"

Ember growled. "I can hear you, you know."

Danny sighed, and his shoulders fell. "Look, Sam, she isn't doing anything wrong right now. I don't want to just throw any ghost in the ghost zone for no reason. No harm, no foul." 

Sam put a hand on her forehead. "Yeah, but... she's a ghost."

Ember smirked when Danny glared at Sam. "Now you sound like Va-" He glanced at Ember. "The Red Huntress," he corrected.

With a flick of her flaming hair, she said, "Hey, dipsticks, I know Valerie is the Red Huntress."

The three humans turned to her. "Wait, really? How?" Tucker asked.

"Uh, duh..." Ember said with a roll of her eyes. "Who gave her a new suit? Technus. He was bragging about it for a month."

The three humans slamming their palms to their forehead in sync shouldn't have made Ember laugh, but then again, she shouldn't have been dead if you asked her. "Anyways, Danny, I was saying she's a ghost that's tried to kill you."

"So? Most people I know have tried to kill me at one point or another," Danny stated with a halfhearted shrug. Ember felt her gut twist at his casual dismissal. Death was final. She may have hated Phantom, but that didn't mean she wanted him dead. She just wanted him out of her plans. For all the threats, she had never tried to outright kill him.

Danny continued, ignorant of Ember's feelings on the matter, "So as long as she's not trying to take over the world by hypnotizing everyone, I honestly have bigger worries to deal with."

Ember scoffed. "So, if I try to take over the world without hypnotizing everyone, it's all fine and dandy then?" She held out her hands for the guitar again. "And give me that back if you aren't playing it."

Danny took off the guitar and walked over to her, dropping it into her waiting arms. "If you take the world over without using ghost powers and people just like your music that much? Yeah, that's fine."

"WHAT?"

Danny flinched at Sam and Tucker's outburst, and he sat down on the bed. "Look, if she does manage to do that, it's because her music was literally just that good. If she did it without ghost powers, then it's because people want it." Danny leaned forward and looked down at the ground. "If that's what happens, well... it's not my job to stop people from liking music. I just stop ghosts from taking advantage of people."

Ember shook her head and pointed at Danny. "Wait, you're joking, right? You'd actually let me rule the world?"

Danny threw his hands up in the air. "If you don't use ghost powers to do it? Yes! Are you going to do it without them? Probably not! Can you get the whole world chanting your name? Sure, why not?" He leaned forward again. "I can help people, yeah, but... I'm still trying not to have to repeat a year of high school. Hence, you know, this whole thing," he said finally, waving a hand about the room.

Ember grew angry. "Then what's with the whole blasting us the first time you see us, then?"

Danny shot her a look; suddenly he didn't seem very Baby Pop-like. This was Phantom. The one who ruined her plans and the plans of every other ghost that has come out of the ghost zone. "How many times have you guys attacked me, hypnotized my friends, overshadowed them, before I've gotten there? When have you ever come out for just a joy ride that didn't involve hurting someone?"

Ember bristled and shifted to do something. She wasn't sure if she should attack or back away, but she stopped when pain shot through her. Immediately, the harsh look that was Phantom was gone, and Danny was there again. He looked down at her leg. "You should probably float rather than sit, it keeps pressure off."

Ember frowned and did as he said. Her leg did immediately feel better, in ways she hadn't even been conscious about. "You'd know, huh?" It was more a statement rather than a question.

Danny nodded.

Sam sat next to Danny on the bed. "Danny..." She sighed and cast a quick glance at Ember before returning to him. "Alright, I can tell you put a lot of thought into this, so I'm not gonna try to tell you otherwise. However, I do reserve the right to tell you I told you so if this blows up in your face." She put a hand on his shoulder and smiled.

Danny chuckled and leaned into the touch just a bit. "Wouldn't have it any other way."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was suprisingly easy for me to write. Three people meet up and know one shared acquantience? Time to make fun of our shared friend. It's always Make Fun of Danny Day. This chapter also starts getting into some of the headcannons I have with some of the ghosts, which will get explained a bit more in depth later, but for now... Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The weekend is over, Danny now has a guitar teacher, and life goes on. Too bad ghosts are stuck in the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apparently can't get notes to show up the way I want them to, so taking a moment here to shout out to aniura for helping me with this chapter and the last one!

Monday morning found Danny coming down the stairs for breakfast. He was completely well-rested for a change. He couldn't remember the last time he had actually gotten a full night of sleep, but his parents working in the lab was one of the best ghost deterrents out there. That left only a few ghosts who were already out before, like Ember. Ember had gone back into the ghost zone under her own power after much nagging and cajoling from Danny. She made her exit once Danny's parents finished whatever experiments they had been running.

Danny walked down the stairs and nodded at Jazz. "Morning, Jazz," he said, brightly waving at her as he stepped into the kitchen.

Jazz straightened and looked at him. "Danny!" she said with an ear to ear grin. "Sleep well?"

Danny smiled and nodded. "Yeah, actually." A sound not unlike a wild bear startled him and made him jump. He turned and noticed his parents in the kitchen. "Whoa, unlike them. What's going on?"

Danny's father was sitting at the table, snoring loudly, drool beginning to dribble down his chin. His head was cupped in his hand, and the elbow set on the table kept it all steady. His other hand had an empty cup of coffee in it, with another empty mug next to it.

His mom, on the other hand, was staring at a pan of sausages on the stove. Danny winced when he noticed that the sausages were the ectoplasm-infused ones that were actually alive. His parents usually refused to cook those ones, unless another scientist came through town. In that case, they invited them over if they mocked them about their research.

His parents were well-known in the scientific community.

Jazz shrugged, the casual action at odds with the concerned look in her eye. "I don't know. They were like this when I came down."

Danny sighed and looked at Jazz. "Jazz..."

Jazz stood up. "Nope, not being here for this."

"GHOST!" Danny shouted before Jazz could get any further.

Their parents snapped to attention, Jack holding the coffee cup up, which turned into something that looked a little too close to the ecto-annihilators for his taste. Maddie's spatula suddenly had an extended beam that glowed with an eerie green light.

"Ghost? Where?" Jack shouted.

"In the sausages," Danny said, pointing at the possessed food.

Maddie turned and looked at the pan. "Oh...I thought that the sausages were sizzling more than usual."

Danny and Jazz looked at each other, waiting for their parents to continue. Both of them stared blankly forward instead, minds obviously trying to climb out of the fog of sleep. Danny shook his head before asking, "Mom, Dad, what on Earth were you two doing this last weekend?"

Maddie sighed and held her hand out. "Fenton Coffee Shooter." Jack handed the coffee mug-turned-dangerous-weapon to Maddie. She lifted the lid off the pan and killed - or re-killed as it were - the sausages. Placing the sausages on her plate, she sat down with the food. "Jack, do you want to explain?" she asked, and then proceeded to start drinking the entire pot of coffee.

Jack grabbed a sausage and took a bite. "So, kids, do you remember the purpose of the ghost portal?"

Jazz and Danny turned and looked at each other. "Uh... it was meant to study ghosts in their world?"

Jack's face fell. "Ah. Yes, we wanted to be able to access the ghost zone. Mostly to see ghosts! But Maddie found out…uh, honey, what is it again?”

Maddie stopped drinking the literal gallon of coffee to sigh and say, “We discovered that we can get power from the ambient ectoplasm from the infinite realms of the ghost zone. Do you know what that means?"

Jazz blinked. "Infinite clean energy..." she whispered.

Danny glanced about the table before raising a hand, "Uh, for those of us who are struggling C students?"

Maddie smiled. "You raised your grades?"

"Trying to," Danny said with a sigh.

Jazz drummed her fingers on the table. "All power comes at a price, in some way or another. When we say clean energy, it's not polluting the environment. Solar power, wind turbines, or hydroelectric dams are sources of power that don’t cause massive pollution."

"Right!" Jack shouted with a thumbs-up. "But Amity Park only has one power source right now, the ghost zone! We're producing so much electricity from that portal that we're dumping enough power back into the city’s grid for everyone!" His face fell. "That's the problem, though."

"How is it a problem?" Danny asked. "That sounds like something good."

"It is, sweetie," Maddie said, finishing off the coffee. "But, when the portal turned on, we were powering the entire state."

"Uhhhhh..." Danny began eloquently. "That... sounds like a lot."

"It is! That's the whole purpose of the ghost portal, really. The fact we can actually study ghosts is a side benefit.”

Jack blinked. “Wait, what?”

“But the power rate has dropped dramatically since it first turned on," Maddie said with a frown. "That's what we were looking into."

Jazz leaned forward. "So, what did you find?"

Maddie shoved an entire sausage into her mouth and chewed on it for a moment. After swallowing, she waved the fork about in the air. "The ghost zone is a chaotic mess as a whole. The further away you get from the portal, the more obvious it becomes. You can find pockets where gravity is reversed or doesn't exist at all. Water is as breathable as air, or air itself is a solid, unmoving mass..." she trailed off.

Danny hummed to himself. He had spent enough time in the ghost zone to know that gravity was a suggestion at best. But he had seen a bit of the solid air phenomenon. "So, that happens as you get deeper into the ghost zone?"

Maddie nodded. "We've sent probes into the ghost zone, and over several months it's taken longer to reach these occurrences. At first, we thought they were just moving, but combined with the fact that we're drawing less energy from the chaotic interactions of the ectoplasm, we've drawn a conclusion. The ghost zone near the portal is stabilizing."

Danny folded his arms. "What does that mean?"

"We don't know."

* * *

Sam put down her cafeteria tray next to Danny. "So, what do you think it means?"

Danny shrugged. "I'm not sure. I'm tempted to make a trip in and ask some of our friends in there."

Tucker took a bite out of his burger and let out a thoughtful hum that drew the attention of the other two. He pointed at Danny. "I mean, if you think about it, it's been a pretty solid series of escalations since the portal's been opened. You had a few months of just dealing with the blob ghosts before the Lunch Lady showed up. The Lunch Lady is pretty scary, but compared to Technus, she's a breeze. On the other hand, Ember can be stopped by the Fenton phones, but Youngblood is ignored by adults even through Fenton tech."

"Tucker, don't talk with your mouth full," Sam hissed, before what he said actually registered. "What about Desiree? She's way more powerful than Youngblood."

"Is she?" Tucker countered. "Again, she can actually be stopped by Fenton tech, and she has to follow her own rules. She has to grant a wish, she can't make a change unless someone wants it. Not only that, but she was also trapped in a bottle in our world. Danny threw her in the ghost zone, and we didn't see her again until around the time Youngblood came out."

Danny groaned. "Are you saying that my life is going to get more difficult?" He rubbed his forehead wearily, stopping when a trail of blue mist escaped from his lungs. Everyone at the table tensed. "Oh no, things were going so well."

"Aw, is that your way of saying you don't want me around, Baby Pop?"

Danny let out a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank goodness, it's you." Danny gave a sidelong look in the direction of her voice. "You...are here to just help me practice, right? Not to cause problems?"

Ember scoffed. "You'd think I'd waste my time if I weren't here for something important?"

Tucker pointed in her general direction. "So, you are here to cause problems?"

Tucker squeaked when Ember's eyes became visible, and she glared at him with hate. "Music is important, you useless dipstick."

Sam glared at Ember. "Tucker isn't useless, and Tucker, you should really know better than to taunt Ember about music." She turned to Danny. "You, on the other hand, should go practice." Sam blinked for a moment. "I can't believe I'm suggesting you go off with Ember."

Danny chuckled. "Honestly, how is that different than usual? I'm just not fighting this time. I'll see you guys in class." He gave them a quick wave and took his lunch tray with him. He felt Ember following him as he made his way out of the lunchroom and into the band room. The school had a band class where students could learn the basics of music and how to play their instruments. However, during Danny's lunch period, it was completely unused.

He had brought Jazz's guitar over to school this morning. Before classes started, he went to Mister Lancer and asked if he could get permission to leave it in the band room under lock and key. Lancer had raised an eyebrow at the request, more at the fact that Danny was bringing a guitar than at the request itself. Apparently, his family's lack of skill in the arts was well known, or maybe the picture of Danny as a musician didn't fit with Lancer's idea of Danny as a delinquent.

Regardless, Danny sat down in the empty band room. Ember appeared for a moment next to him. "Alright, ready to rock, Phantom?" she said with a smirk.

"As ready as I'll ever be," he said with a smile as Ember moved closer. The next moment, he felt a chill as Ember began to partially overshadow him. He resisted the urge to try and force her out of his body. Instead, he brought his focus to his chest and his head, letting her guide his hands along the guitar. "Don't think I'll ever actually get used to this."

"Hey, it's not like I really want to either," Ember grumbled inside his head. "This is a hell of a lot easier than trying to actually teach you normally." She smirked, which was a weird sensation for Danny. "I can't believe you had suggested this."

"I’d been joking!" Danny insisted, but despite that, he didn't fight Ember when she started guiding his fingers up and down the guitar. He closed his eyes and focused on the feeling of his hands playing the song. Trying to commit it to memory.

He had to admit, it was impossible not to be distracted. Tucker had always theorized that overshadowing people was tied somehow to emotions. Something about replacing their emotions with your own and completely overriding them. Why he thought it was emotion and not overriding thoughts was beyond Danny, but right now, he had to admit there was probably something to that.

Ember was content. That was the thought Danny had as Ember played the guitar. The sound reverberated throughout the room. With each pluck of the strings, another wave of happiness came from Ember. She was perfectly in her element.

Then the door opened. "What the hell? Fenturd?"

Danny opened his eyes and tried not to let his agitation show.

Ember growled inside Danny. "Who's this dipstick?"

Danny muttered quietly, "Dash Baxter. He's the star quarterback of Casper High, and he hates me." He looked up at Dash as the bully marched up to him. Dash was way taller than Danny, with almost a full foot over him, and twice as wide as Danny at the shoulders. The blonde student-athlete glared at Danny as if he had personally offended him.

"What do you want, Dash?"

Dash glanced back as another student entered the band room. The newcomer was a completely gorgeous Latina student who glared at Danny through long lashes.

"Oh, ew, what are you doing here?"

Danny rolled his eyes. "I'm doing my chemistry homework, Paulina."

Dash grabbed Danny's shirt and shook him. "Don't get funny, Fentina, or I'll see if these music lockers can fit a nerd in them."

Danny held up his hands. "Okay, okay, sorry!"

Danny felt Ember twitch inside his body. "What the hell? Baby Pop, why are you apologizing to them?"

Paulina smirked at Danny being jerked around. "Well, we wanted to use this room to talk about the talent show. We're planning on figuring out who should go first."

Danny frowned. "What does that matter?"

Dash yanked Danny again. "Duh, people are going to be watching! Recruiters come by. Not something you need to care about.”

Ember lurched again. Hard enough that Danny thought for a moment that Ember was going to jump out of his body and attack the two of them. Anger filled his veins like fire as he was jerked, and the guitar that was slung about his neck slammed into his waist. Her voice echoed clearly in his head,  _ "Phantom, what the hell are you doing?" _

The two more popular kids glared at Danny. Dash leaned in and growled in Danny’s face. "What is a loser like you doing here, anyway?" Dash looked down and finally noticed the guitar that Danny had. "Oh, don't tell me you're going to be in the talent show, too?"

Danny shrugged. Dash still hadn't let him go. "Yeah, Mister Lancer was worried since people don't want to try out for the talent show, because of all the ghosts."

Ember hissed in Danny's ear. _ "Phantom, just throw them off!" _

The other two looked at each other, and Dash let go of Danny. "What do you mean, ghosts?"

Danny brushed off his shirt, taking note that the collar had stretched a bit. "Apparently, it's on a pagan holiday, and they're not willing to change the date because of the recruiters and sponsors. A lot of people are worried about ghosts showing up, though."

Dash gave a wide grin and turned to Paulina. "Oh, man! Do you think Phantom will show up?"

The rage Ember was giving off chilled. _ "What."  _ There was no inflection. Danny could feel the revulsion from Ember so strongly, he thought he was going to get sick himself.

Paulina smiled. "Oh! I bet he will! He'll come to see me!"

Dash raised a hand for a high five to Paulina. "Oh, man! I wonder if I can get him to sign my football!" Paulina had to jump, but she gave Dash the high five he was looking for. “Man, this will be sick!”

Danny was wrong,  _ now  _ he thought he was going to get sick. Ember was literally shaking inside of him.  _ "You've got to be kidding me," _ Ember uttered.

The two looked back at Danny. "Now it's even more important that we figure out who goes first, so scram, freak."

The rage was back.  _ "Phantom! Just slug him already!" _

Danny sighed and ignored Ember yelling in his ear. "Alright, alright." He grabbed the guitar case and left the band room.

Ember, however, wanted nothing to do with that. " _ Phantom! Get back there! Tell them off! Punch him and kick her!" _

Danny frowned as Ember's rage literally put him off balance.  _ "Ember, calm down," _ he whispered as he put his hand on the wall to steady himself.

_ "Scream at them! Possess them! HURT THEM!" _

"Ember!" Danny said a little louder, looking around to make sure no one could see him talking to himself.

_ "CUT HER HAIR! BURN THEM! MAKE THEM PAY!" _

"Ember McLain!" Danny hissed. At her name, he felt her rage flicker out, only leaving a cold dread. "Ember, what's going on?"

Ember suddenly left Danny's body. She floated in front of him for a moment before slowly drifting over to a set of stairs. She hung in the air, like a puppet on strings as she ghosted through the hallways. Danny sighed as he began following her, he found her hiding underneath the stairs. Danny didn't think he would have found her if he didn't have a literal sixth sense for ghosts. She was tucked underneath the stairs, behind a trash and recycling bin.

Sitting on the ground, her face was hidden in her legs, and her hair covered what would have been visible otherwise. Danny sat down next to her. "Ember, what was that?" he asked quietly.

Ember shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it, Baby Pop." She was dead silent for a moment, unbreathing and unmoving. She turned her head and moved her ponytail out of the way so she could look at him. "Why do you put up with that?"

Danny sighed. "What should I do? Tell them who I am? Everyone would know within a week." He shrugged. "Don't want my parents finding out that way. Should I get back at them? But then, would I be better than them?"

"You'd be even," Ember stated with a finality that sent a shiver up his spine.

"You know, I did try once, for like a week."

"What happened?"

"Got dragged into the ghost zone and was picked on for a few days. Locker shoving, knocked into the ground, given swirlies, the works," Danny said with a smirk on his face that he wasn't really feeling. "Gotta say though, shoving Dash into his own locker was pretty fun."

Ember smiled slightly. "I bet." The smile fell, and then a look of pure rage flickered onto her face as she looked straight ahead. No movement was involved. One second she was looking at Danny, the next like the wall had insulted her. "So they're in the talent show, too?"

Danny sighed. "Looks like it."

Ember took a deep breath. "Keep practicing, Danny. You’re going to steal the show."

Danny blinked. "Ummm... alright."

Ember looked down. "You can practice here. No one will come looking."

Danny grabbed the guitar and started trying to replicate what Ember had shown him. He had made an absurd amount of progress for someone who had never picked up a guitar before -- the advantage of your teacher being a ghost who could literally control you into doing what you were supposed to do. "How do you know?" he asked after a few bars.

"These halls haven't changed since I've been here," Ember responded. Danny turned to look at her, but all he caught were a few traces of flames.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is probably one of my favorite chapters in this arc. I have a couple of head cannons that have shown up in this chapter. A couple of them here are 1) The portal to the ghost zone has a side benefit that's extremely useful to the town as a whole, hence why they don't just shut it down. 2) Ember lived and died in Amity Park. 
> 
> Once again, thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ember's short visit back into school brought out some of her own ghosts from the past, now we'll see how she deals with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One again beta'd by [aniura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aniura/pseuds/aniura) who's currently working on her own fic [Just Fourteen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26153824/chapters/63633916). She's now caught up to when I started helping her with her fic, so you should head over and give her some support as well! She also informed me that I can drop links in these notes!

Ember sat, invisibly and intangibly, on the curb across from Casper High School. She wrapped her arms around her legs as she heard the bell ring. Her fingers tapped out a beat on her arms as she waited for Danny to leave the school. She had told Danny to practice on his own, but they hadn't gone over that much. Ember couldn't help but worry about him building bad habits. She thought about going in to check on him, see if he was practicing.

A wave of revulsion passed over her, and she shuddered.

No, she would not be going back into the school for a while. Johnny told her that for a while after his death, his bike scared him. Over time, he got over it. It took him a while, though. It was at least a couple years, from what it sounded like. Ember didn't care to spend that long dealing with  _ that _ . She had better things to do, like talking to The Box Ghost, or making friends with Klemper.

The final bell rang out. A few minutes later, students began to file out of the school. Students walked out of the school, talking with their friends, making plans for the night or the weekend, or wondering what they would do when they got home. The acts of living put a pit in Ember's stomach and a lump in her throat.

The crowd parted to let some people through. Ember watched Paulina walking down the steps, talking with a blonde girl next to her. Paulina smiled charmingly at a few students as she walked by them, with her friend giggling and whispering in her ear. Ember felt a fire course through her veins. Her fingers dug into her arm as her powers began to affect the area around her. A few humans walking by shivered as the temperature dropped, coughing and breaking into a cold sweat. The air grew damp as Ember's fire began to churn and stroke up a heat that no one living could feel.

Ember closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against her knees. As much as she wanted to burn Paulina to ash, it wouldn't really make her feel better to burn someone in effigy, nor would it endear her to Phantom, who was letting her spend some time out in the real world. She took a deep breath and let her anger go. She looked up and saw Danny and Tucker staring after Paulina with half-lidded gazes; their eyes trailed down from the back of her head to the heels that she was wearing. Ember glanced to the right of the two of them and saw Sam glaring at Paulina with about half as much hate as Ember was.

Ember let herself become visible for a brief moment. It was enough that the three ghost hunters snapped to attention and looked in her direction. As one, they moved to cross the street and walked over towards Ember's spot on the curb. As they approached, Ember could hear the three of them talking.

"Why do you even care?" Tucker asked, giving Sam a pointed look.

Sam scoffed as she shoved the set of techno-looking earrings into her ears. "I care ‘cause I don't like seeing you two going gaga over someone who literally doesn't care about you."

Ember stood up and folded her arms before going visible in front of Danny. "Please tell me that you're not crushing on that girl who literally kicked you out of the band room to make out with that jock?"

Tucker and Sam blinked. "What?"

Meanwhile, Danny blushed as he managed to sputter out, "I don't... I mean..."

"Oh my  _ god _ , Phantom," Ember said, rubbing her forehead.

Sam growled and stomped over next to Ember. "I know, right?" She gestured at Tucker and Danny by waving her hand at them before sighing in disgust and throwing her hands up in the air. “I don’t get it.” 

Danny folded his arms and looked away. "I don't see what the big deal is?"

Ember turned toward Sam. "Please tell me he's not always this stupid."

Sam folded her arms too and looked away from Danny to Ember. "I would, but I don't like lying."

Ember turned toward Danny and let out a long-suffering sigh. "I honestly thought you were smarter than that, dipstick."

Danny groaned and rubbed his face. "Look... I don't... I don't want to get into this? Okay?" With a sigh, his shoulders slumped. "Can we just get to practicing?" he said, indicating the guitar that he had on his back.

"Fine," Ember stated flatly. She'd rather be doing that anyways. The four of them began walking down the street towards the park. They walked in silence, and after a while, it began to get oppressive. Ember could taste the putrid scents of self-loathing from the humans around her. She had no idea how Spectra fed on that.

She turned toward Sam. "Hey, Sam. What kind of music do you listen to anyways?"

Everyone jumped at the sudden break of silence, but they latched onto the lifeline. Sam smiled. "Well, I listen to a lot of indie stuff, big labels are basically all the same. I really like techno, but metal is pretty good too."

Ember smirked. "We're gonna have to talk bands at some point, and you can catch me up on that scene. It's nearly impossible to find anything new in the ghost zone. The only one who can is Technus and well... it's Technus."

She turned towards Tucker. "What about you, geek?"

Tucker gave Ember finger guns. "Well, I actually still listen to your album."

"Seriously?" Sam and Danny said at the same time.

Tucker held up his hands. "Hey, I ran it through the Fenton Phones. No more mind control for me... also, for some reason I do better on my homework when I listen to it. I just blink, and suddenly it's gone."

Ember let out a slow hum. "Yeaahhh... You might want to look into that. That still sounds like mind control."

Tucker shrugged. "I'll worry about that when I start having problems testing. Anyways, I also listen to a lot of video game soundtracks."

Ember raised an eyebrow at Tucker. "You... actually enjoy listening to that beeping?"

Tucker blinked a few times. Then his eyes got wide. "You died in the mid-'80s!"

Ember flinched and took a step back. "Yeah, wh-"

Tucker grabbed Danny and started shaking him. "Danny! She doesn't know!"

Danny's head snapped back and forth, and his voice wavered with each shake. "Know what, Tuck?"

"Zelda! Blazblue! Persona! Final Fantasy!" He gasped and let go of Danny. "She hasn't listened to Doom's soundtrack!"

Ember turned to Sam. "Uhhh... should I know any of what he's talking about?"

Sam had her phone out and was typing away at it. "This is from the video game he's talking about right now." She handed her phone over to Ember as a heavy guitar riff started playing. She had enough time to think she recognized the picture from somewhere deep in the ghost zone before drums kicked in to follow the guitar.

She read the title of the song out loud. "The only thing they fear is you..." Ember looked up at Tucker, who was staring at her with wide eyes. "This is from a video game?" Tucker slowly nodded, and Ember looked back down at the phone. "I think I might need to get caught up a bit."

Sam reached over to take her phone back. Ember held onto the phone for a moment, before remembering that Tucker wanted to introduce her to more music. Sam put the phone into a pocket hidden in her skirt. “Well, alright, but you're going to need to disguise yourself if we’re gonna hang out at the mall.”

Ember scoffed and glared at Sam. “I'm Ember McLain. I don't do disguises.”

Sam ticked off on her fingers. “Three, two, one...” She pointed at the road by them. Ember followed her gaze just in time to see Dash hanging out a car window.

“EMBER! WE LOVE YOU!” he shouted as the car sped past. “COME TO THE MALL WITH US!”

Ember blinked. “Well, I suppose celebrities have to tone it down sometimes.”

She ignored the chuckling of the dipsticks around her as she closed her eyes and reached deep into herself, finding a well of matter and life that was her core. She ripped into it, tearing chunks off and shredding them into ectoplasm. The tatters of life swirled about her for a moment, but she doubted anyone other than Danny would have noticed. In a flash of fire, they formed about her torso, hair, and eyes. She opened her eyes to see the world tinted.

She adjusted her new sunglasses on her face before checking that her hat was on straight. “Alright,” she said. She stuffed her hands into the new leather jacket and rolled her shoulders. “So how far away is this mall?”

Tucker rocked his hand back and forth. “Ten minutes walking, give or take.”

Ember frowned. “Ten minutes?” she grumbled. She wanted the new music  _ now. _

“Yeah, bit longer if we get caught with bad timing on crosswalks.”

Ember shook her head. “Nuh-uh, too long.” She grabbed Sam's hand and then Danny's. “Grab on,” she ordered Tucker.

The three of them flinched, but when nothing happened, Tucker grabbed Danny's hand. “Uh, we can't exactly fly over there, it'd be-”

“We ain't flying, dipstick,” Ember stated. She closed her eyes and focused on her feeling of forgetfulness. She forgot for a moment everything that she had been. She forgot what the world was like.

In a breath of smoke and fire, they weren't standing on the sidewalk anymore.

The humans gasped and took a step back instinctually. They looked about to see the entrance to the mall. Danny rubbed his wrist and looked at Ember. “What was  _ that _ ? Where’d you get those?” He pointed at the sunglasses on her face.

Ember scoffed and flicked her ponytail back. “Ghost powers, duh.”

“That... that didn't feel like a ghost power.”

She frowned and when he waggled his finger about, it clicked. “Have you never changed how you look? But you wear that stupid jumpsuit all the time.”

Danny blushed and looked away. “I... I died in that.”

Ember coughed and averted her gaze. “Ummm... what?” She hoped the glasses covered the blush caused by her faux pas; no ghost liked being reminded of the worst day of their lives. “But you even have that stupid emblem.”

“Hey!” Sam said, putting her hands on her hips. “It's not stupid!”

Danny frowned. “Ummm... how did he put it?” He put his hand in his chin. “Somehow, we retroactively altered the timestream so that I've always had it. Sam put it on my jumpsuit after we met in highschool, but... we've always known each other? Clockwork said we made some sort of stable paradox.”

Tucker grunted in disgust. “As compared to an unstable paradox?”

“Wait, back up.” Ember tilted her head forward and lowered her glasses so she could see Danny over them. “Did you just say Clockwork? As in, the literal god of time?”

Danny shrugged. “He hates being called that, by the way. He says no one gives him enough respect for that.”

Ember blinked. “How the hell did you get his attention?”

Danny smiled, like the cocky little shit she thought he was. “He likes me.”

“Huh...” Really, there wasn't anything Ember could say to that.

“Alright!” Tucker said, pointing into the mall. “To the video game store!”

Ember turned toward Sam as Danny and Tucker walked in. “You know... if you told me a week ago I'd be doing this, I'd have smacked someone upside the head.”

Sam laughed. “I can relate.” She tapped her fingers against her chin. “You know... I think I could recommend a few games you'd like too, not just cause the music is good.”

Ember shrugged. “I dunno. I'm not really into playing games.”

“Even if you can rub it in Danny's face that you're better than him at them, or Technus?”

Ember smirked. “You had my curiosity, now you have my attention.”

“I didn't know you’d watched that movie,” Sam said with a laugh.

“What movie?”

“Oh... we'll need to catch you up on those, too.”

* * *

A few weeks later, Johnny and Kitty jumped when the door to their lair was opened with a bone-shaking bang. For Kitty, she just jerked at the sound and put a hand over where a beating heart would have been. For Johnny, his jump resulted in him banging his head on the handlebar of his motorcycle. "Ow, man, what was that?"

Ember stormed over towards the couch that Kitty was sitting on. Without missing a beat, she dropped down and got comfortable. "My lair is on the fritz," Ember grumbled, ignoring the looks that the other two ghosts were giving each other, "And I know you two have electricity." She pulled out something from a bag and a power cable and plugged it into the lair wall. She looked at the device and smirked. "Good, didn't lose my progress."

Kitty scooted over. "Ummm... Ember? You said your lair is..."

Ember sighed and played with her hair. "It's coming up..."

Johnny stopped working on his bike, deciding to just drop it. "Shadow, drink," he ordered. His shadow broke off from him and ran to a fridge and opened it. The ghost reached in and pulled out three bottles and slammed the refrigerator shut. A box on top of the fridge tottered and fell on the ground. The three ghosts winced as something shattered in the box.

"I'll clean that up later," Johnny chuckled, taking the bottles and opening them. “Wanna drink?”  
Kitty looked at the bottle and took in a deep breath. “Johnny! You thick skulled idiot!” She hissed. 

Johnny looked down at the bottle and winced. “Damn it, Shadow.” He muttered. “Uh, I got some root beer instead?”

“No, it’s fine.” Ember said quietly, taking the bottle but not drinking from it. 

Johnny and Kitty shared a significant look before Kitty took hers and took a swig before poking Ember. "So, what's that?"

Ember perked up. "You remember arcades? It’s basically one of those machines, but it can fit in a purse. Sam called it a Switch. Phantom got me one. I think he thought that if I had something to entertain myself with, I'd be less likely to cause problems in the living world."

Johnny smirked. "Well, I mean, if he wants to bribe me, I'm willing to give him a bit of a break."

Ember laughed weakly. "Yeah..."

Kitty frowned. "Ember, is something wrong?"

Ember put the Switch aside and leaned forward. "Uh... well... you know the saying before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes?" When they nodded, she continued. "Well... I've been spending a lot of time with Phantom lately." She sighed. "You know he's not sure if he's going to make it to graduation?"

Johnny shrugged. "So? He has to repeat a year, wasn't so bad for me."

Ember shook her head. "No, Johnny, I mean, he isn't going to make it."

Johnny grimaced. "Oh," he said, sitting down. He looked at Ember. "I mean, it's not like we're trying to kill him, really. Sure we're a little rough, but it's more like... the usual stress relief now."

"It's almost been a month," Ember growled. "Do you want to know how many ghost attacks I've seen?" Ember didn't give them a chance to answer. "Twenty. Twenty ghost attacks in twenty-eight days." Ember threw her hands up in the air. "That I was there for! Klemper, Skulker, Desiree, Walker, Johnny," Ember glared at Johnny at that one before turning to Kitty, "Kitty, The Box Ghost, The Lunch Lady, Spectra, Youngblood, Vlad, Technus..." She rubbed her forehead. "It's not just us though, it's the animal ghosts too." She sighed and leaned back. "I'm tempted to beat the crap out of The Box Ghost myself next time I see him."

Johnny shrugged. "Alright, I get it, the kid's busy."

"And tired," Ember said, leaning back. "He's staying up late 'cause of ghost attacks, and being a freaking boy scout during the day."

"So he shoves his nose into-"

Ember's hair twisted about as she glared at him. "It's not even about what he's doing! It's..." She sighed, and her hair fell back down. "Johnny, don't you wish you and Kitty graduated high school? ‘Cause I do."

Kitty put a hand on Ember's shoulder. "I get what you're saying, Ember, but what are we supposed to do?"

Ember shrugged. "I want to stop causing problems for Phantom. If the three of us aren't causing problems for him, that's three ghosts that he doesn't have to deal with."

"We can do that much, right, Johnny?" Kitty said, turning toward Johnny.

"Sure, I guess," Johnny said with a shrug, realizing that Kitty hadn't really been asking for his opinion.

Kitty smiled and then pointed at the Switch. "Alright, so what goodie did Phantom bribe you with?"

"He bought me the system and a game called Cadence of Hyrule. You run around and beat up enemies to the beat of the music."

Kitty chuckled. "Sounds like everything you've wanted."

Ember laughed, reaching over and taking a big gulp out of the bottle. "It's close, at least."

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, this chapter was a rough one to write. I think I redid this whole chapter like 5 or 6 times. It took a while, but eventually, I got it into a spot where I liked it. Aniura really helped out on that front. A few other head cannons show up in this chapter. I have assumptions on the various character's ages. Ember, Kitty, and Johnny are 18, 18, and 19 respectively, with Johnny being held back a year in high school, and none of them graduating before dying. I don't see Johnny being in his twenties, since I'd assume that Jazz's parents would have made a MUCH bigger deal of Jazz dating him if he were. Also, you can't tell me that Ember wouldn't love the DOOM soundtrack. 
> 
> Since you're here reading this, thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's finally the night of the talent show. Danny gets to show off what he's learned from Ember. He's just got to perform in front of all his peers. No pressure right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta read by both [aniura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aniura/pseuds/aniura) and [HeroineofTime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeroineofTime/pseuds/HeroineofTime) so special thanks to them!

Danny was leaving his house to go to school, this time at night. "Mom, Dad, I'm sure you don't need to be at the talent show," he said, putting on his shoes and adjusting the jacket Sam and Ember told him to wear. The two of them teaming up on him was not something he saw coming. In retrospect, he really should have.

Maddie walked over and tried to fix his hair. "Are you sure? You've been practicing so much. We do feel bad about missing this."

Danny sighed and pushed his mom's hand away. "I'm sure, Mom," he said, fixing his hair back to the way he liked it. "Besides, it's Walpurgis night. A lot of ghost issues are probably going to happen tonight."

"Alright, Danny, if you're sure," Maddie said, taking a step back. "But could you take a Fenton ecto blaster? Just in case?" She reached into a bag and grabbed a glowing pistol, handing it to Danny.

Danny rolled his eyes. "Sure thing, Mom. Just so you know, I'm handing it to Sam." He took the offered weapon and put it in a pocket in the inside of his jacket.

Maddie smiled. "That’s fine, dear. It’s using the grip tape that she likes!"

"Gee, thanks," Danny muttered. He picked up Jazz's guitar and went out the front door. He walked over to Jazz's car and put the guitar in the backseat carefully before getting into the front. "Okay, Mom and Dad are planning on being anywhere else tonight."

Jazz raised an eyebrow at Danny. "Is there a reason why we tried to keep them away from school? I mean, other than the usual embarrassment they cause?"

Danny buckled his seat belt. "Because I know there's going to be at least one ghost there that I don't want them blasting on sight. I'm sure she'd be quite put-off by that, right Ember?"

Ember materialized in the back of Jazz's car. "How'd you know I was here?"

Danny turned around and smirked. "Ghost sense, remember?"

"Seatbelt," Jazz chided, looking at Ember in the rearview mirror.

Ember turned and looked at her. "You're joking, right?"

"I don't joke about safety."

"I'm a ghost!" Ember growled out.

Jazz raised an eyebrow. "And I help put Danny back together after some of his ghost fights."

Ember growled but buckled herself into the car. "You're lucky I know you have great taste in musicians."

Jazz smiled and then put the car into reverse and backed out of the driveway. "Hey, Ember, I just wanted to say thanks for teaching Danny. I know it's not something you had to do at all."

Ember laughed and sat up. She reached up and ran her fingers through the flames of her ponytail, letting it drift over her shoulders. "It could have been worse," she said, "But you know, it wasn't too bad. He's a quick study."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Danny grumbled.

"Baby Pop, you should know better by now. If I'm saying you're not bad, it means you might pass for an opening band for me, maybe."

Jazz laughed. "He's that good now, huh?"

"He passes," Ember said with a smirk that said he did more than pass her expectations.

"I'm glad I've been able to maintain my C average, even in my few extracurriculars."

Jazz brightened. "You've gotten to C, finally?"

"Trying to," Danny said with a shrug. "Helps that I was actually able to sleep the last couple of nights. Seems like the ghosts seemed to have calmed down in prep for tonight."

Jazz let out a quiet hum and checked the rearview mirror. "Interesting. Know anything about that, Ember?"

Ember jerked, and in a blink she was leaning back and staring at Jazz. "What? Why would I know anything about it? Besides, Danny already said why. It's Walpurgis night. Do you know how many parties are going on tonight?"

Jazz smirked. "And yet, you're going to a high school talent show."

"I'm just making sure Danny doesn't screw up. Gotta protect my image," Ember said with a casual shrug.

"Once again, an amazing vote of confidence by Ember," Danny said, folding his arms and shuffling in his seat.

Jazz reached over and patted his knee. "Relax, little brother, she already said you're going to do great."

Danny sighed and relaxed. "Alright."

Ember folded her arms, and Danny felt her focus shift onto him. "What's eating at you, anyway?"

Danny held up his hand and counted down on his fingers. "The ghosts have been quiet again, which is usually followed by something horrible happening. My parents have been building more and more ghost hunting equipment. And everyone has been not so subtly asking me to rethink the talent show."

Ember scoffed, "Well, screw all that." She smacked Danny's seat with the back of her hand. "The ghosts have been quiet? That should be good, shouldn't it? Your parents' ghost hunting equipment is stuff you wind up using half the time anyway! And anyone who tells you to rethink doing the talent show is a dipstick who, if I weren't trying to keep on your good side, I'd be reminding them how the guitar got called an axe."

Jazz chuckled. "Pretty sure attempted beheadings aren't how they got that nickname."

"No one asked you," Ember snapped.

Danny let out a sigh. "Yeah, you're probably right."

"Of course I am. The sooner you accept that the better," Ember said, throwing her hair back and crossing her legs.

The three of them sat in silence for a minute, Danny shifting uncomfortably. When Jazz pulled up to a stoplight, Danny looked back. "Hey, Ember? Switch with me."

Ember startled at Danny suddenly breaking the silence. "What?"

"Take the front seat, and I'll take the back."

Ember blinked. "Um, okay?" The two of them went invisible and intangible, their seatbelts snapping back against the car seats.

"Hey!" Jazz shouted as the two ghosts changed spots in the car. "Put your seat belts back on!"

Ember glared at Jazz as she pulled on the seat belt to give her room to occupy the space again. Once situated and Danny had snapped his seat belt back on, she looked back. "Not that I mind, but why give me the front seat, Baby Pop?"

Danny reached into the guitar case by phasing through it and pulled out the guitar. "Just... wanted to get some more practice in."

Ember held focus on Danny, even as Jazz began driving again. She glanced at Jazz. "He always this nervous?"

Jazz looked back. "No, Danny, what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, it's just..." Danny trailed off and shrugged. His fingers continued to play along the guitar.

Ember looked forward. "Stage fright."

"What?"

Ember waved her hand through the air. "You're getting stage fright, duh. You know, that thing that lesser mortals like yourself have to deal with when they stand in front of a crowd and worry about making losers of themselves."

Danny blinked. "Uh... yeah... I guess."

"I've been told imagining them in their underwear helps, but I've seen the people at your school. That sounds like it'll make you sick instead."

Jazz let out a quiet hum. "While that might work, usually the way to reduce stage fright is to shut down thoughts of failure, and instead focus on what success looks like." Jazz gestured with her right arm. "What do you think success looks like?"

"Umm..."

"She's talking about me, Baby Pop."

Jazz scoffed and muttered, "I wasn't, actually..."

Ember continued over Jazz, "I'm what success looks like."

Danny laughed. "Somehow, I can't imagine Dash shouting my name."

Jazz responded immediately, "Why not? He already does for Phantom."

"Yeah, but that's Phantom."

Ember scoffed, "And  _ you're _ Phantom. What's the problem?"

Danny leaned back. "Maybe it's stupid-"

"It is," Ember interrupted, and Jazz shot her a glare.

"-but I just don't want to look like a loser."

The three of them were silent for a beat.

"If you wind up looking like a loser, I'm crashing the show."

Danny jerked. "What? Why?"

"Ember, why would you threaten that? Just a few days before the day off you asked for?" Jazz said with a sigh.

Ember glared at Danny. "You told her?"

Jazz rolled her eyes. "Of course he told me. We need to be on the same page if our parents start going after you."

Ember sunk into the seat a bit. "Oh."

"Though that still doesn't answer my question."

"Look, Baby Pop is all freaked out over looking like a loser. Well, Phantom does a pretty good job under pressure, so ya know, add more pressure and bring out Phantom."

Danny groaned and leaned against the back of the seat in front of him. "What does it say about my life that her logic is actually making sense?"

"That all of us really need therapy?" Jazz offered.

Ember shrugged. "Probably." Jazz gave her a look to which Ember scoffed, "I'm dead, girl."

"Touché."

* * *

A few hours later, Danny was taking a deep breath and trying to stem the nervous sweat that was flowing down his forehead. Sam came off the stage and held up a hand for a high five. 

"See? Nothing to it," she said as people politely clapped for her. Lancer could barely be heard as he thanked her for her poetry readings and Tucker for doing the lights.

"Easy for you to say. You do this all the time at the book shop." He gave her the high five anyways.

"Don't worry about it. Have fun," Sam said, walking behind him and putting her hands on his shoulders.

"And now, the next act, with Tucker Foley once again doing the lights, and Danny Fenton on the guitar!" Mister Lancer announced into the microphone.

Sam pushed Danny out. "Go get em, ghost boy!" she shouted over the clapping.

Danny took a few steps out into the lights and froze. That was a lot more people than he was expecting. His palms felt slick with sweat just looking at all of them, and he felt a lump in his throat beginning to form.

Danny saw Dash stand up in the crowd and shout, "Ha! Fenturd plays guitar! What a joke!"

Danny blinked for a second, before he heard a quiet cough behind him, shocking him out of inaction.

Right, Danny was a loser, but Phantom could do something like this just fine. Danny took a deep breath and muttered quietly to himself, "Sorta going ghost?" He threw his shoulder's back and took a few steps forward. Quips helped him deal with ghosts trying to kill him. They could help here.

"Man," Danny said. He spoke loudly enough so the microphones hanging from the ceiling could pick him up as he stepped out to the center stage. "That's a lot more of you than I thought were going to be here. Jeez." He smirked and looked at Mister Lancer. "Hey, Mister Lancer, is this worse than dealing with us in class or easier since you don't have to see most of us tomorrow?"

Mister Lancer blinked a few times, not actually expecting to be talked to, before he chuckled into the microphone, "It is a lot easier, mostly because, unlike someone I can mention, they actually pay attention."

The crowd laughed as Danny put his hand over his heart. "Mister Lancer, you wound me!" Danny covered his eyes and looked around into the dark. "Alright, Tuck, hit the lights!"

"You got it, man!"

As soon as the lights shifted to focus on Danny, he put his fingers to the guitar and began to play. The guitar rang out as Danny started to play Cliffs of Dover for the crowd. He kept his eyes on his fingers as he played. Almost immediately, everything Danny had been worrying about melted away. He had practiced the song end to end so many times his fingers were on autopilot.

Danny chanced a look up and felt his face betray him by growing an ear-to-ear grin. The students he saw in the crowd were staring at him open-mouthed, while the parents and people who didn't know him were bobbing along to the song itself.

The lights shifted, and Danny followed them like Tucker had told him to. He walked up to the front of the stage, playing the entire time. Danny shook his head, trying to get rid of the sweat threatening to get into his eyes, but now it wasn't a nervous sweat; it was the heat from the stage lights.

When Danny finished the song, he let the last note ring out longer than usual and looked up at the crowd when Tucker drew the lights away from him. He took a quick bow when he saw several people standing and clapping for him. Not everyone was, but the looks of shock on their faces was more than enough for Danny.

Danny was broken out of the moment when he heard a strained voice behind him. “Good job, Baby Pop. You still got one more to go.” 

Danny glanced over his shoulder. He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was there. The tenseness in her voice was hard to miss. Danny turned and looked over the crowd. A weight settled in his stomach when he realized this was what Ember had always wanted, but never got to have before she died. 

It was literally her obsession. 

It must have been torture to sit and watch someone else play in a crowd cheering for them, when it was something you wanted so badly it kept you from passing on. 

Danny smirked. "Hey, Ember, still there?"

"Well,” she began, her voice still tight, “you still have a chance to make an idiot out of yourself, so yes."

"I got a really stupid idea. Still against duets?"

There was a moment of silence on the stage as Mister Lancer tried to get people to calm down and ready for the second song Danny was going to play. "Oh, Baby Pop," Ember said, and Danny didn't need to see her to know she was grinning. "You sure know how to show a girl a great time."

Danny ran off to the side of the stage and waved at Sam. Sam walked over with a raised eyebrow. "What's up?"

"Tell Jazz to get ready and have the car running."

Sam glared at Danny. "What stupid idea do you have?"

"A fun one."

"I was afraid of that. Should I have the Fenton Phones on?"

"Well, they won't hurt," Danny said with a shrug before running back to the center of the stage. He brought up the guitar and spoke loud enough for the mics to pick him up again. "What do you think, Mister Lancer? Not bad for someone who picked up the guitar a month ago."

Lancer turned toward Danny and smirked. "Not bad at all, Mister Fenton. If you studied as hard you must have practiced, then you'd definitely be passing your English classes."

"Well, in my defense, my guitar teacher was literally haunting me."

The crowd had quieted down now, and Danny could see Mister Lancer's raised eyebrow. "I'll remember that the next time I assign poetry reading for you. Your parents may hate ghosts, but I'm certain they'd let one or two stick around to help your grades."

Danny strummed a few strings. "Well, speaking of, here's the next one. She said if she was gonna teach me, I had to learn this one too."

Drums began to play, and Mister Lancer's eyes widened. Danny played the very first notes, and a beat later, Ember's voice rang out through the gymnasium. Suddenly every student was up in their seats and cheering.

Ember appeared in a gout of flame, along with a ghostly drummer and a bassist. "People of Amity Park!" she shouted over the music. "TELL ME! WHO! YOU LOVE!

"We love you, Ember!" the crowd shouted immediately in response. Ember's hair rose up as she took in their adoration before she summoned a microphone and began singing. Danny looked up from the guitar to see everyone clamoring to get closer to the stage. Fortunately, no one actually was attempting to get on the stage. Still, every student who had shown up tonight was cheering for Ember.

Between verses, Ember took a step back and looked back at Danny. Danny took that as his cue and walked closer to the front of the stage. Danny had thought people cheering for him was overwhelming before, but that was blown out of the water compared to now. The stage was shaking with people jumping up and down to the music. It was enough to make him grin cockily as he played the solo that Ember usually would.

When he finished, he took a few steps back and let Ember begin singing again. He turned and saw Sam in the back with a palm on her face, and he couldn't help but laugh. Danny turned back to see Ember looking at him. She was smirking as she called out the last lines of the song, "You will remember my name!"

She held the microphone high as the crowd chanted her name over and over again. After a few moments of that, Danny shouted. "Alright, guys! That's it for our set!"

Ember laughed. "Yeah, I couldn't teach this dipstick more than two songs in a month. It was hard enough getting him to learn the two."

"Enjoy the rest of the night!" Danny shouted before he looked at Ember, and the two of them ran off the stage.

Danny grabbed Sam as he ran past her. "Danny? What are we doing?"

"A rock star does a pop-up show in a school of fans with no security? What do you think is going to happen?" Danny asked, Ember cackling as they ran through the halls.

The doors behind them burst open, and students came running out. "Ember! We love you!" 

Dash and some of the football players managed to break away from the group. "Ember! Sign my shirt!"

"Faster, Danny!" Sam shouted, grabbing Danny's hand and beginning to drag him towards the exit. The three of them ran through the exit doors, Ember by turning intangible, Sam and Danny by running into the doors with their shoulders. Jazz's car was waiting just down the stairs. The three of them ran into the car.

"Drive! Drive!" Ember shouted between cackles.

"Seat belts!" Jazz ordered but started accelerating anyways. "Danny, what did you do?"

Sam threw her hands up in the air. "He invited Ember to play with him! Ghost powers and all!"

"Wait, did you hypnotize them all?" Jazz asked.

Ember folded her arms. "Nah, Baby Pop back there would have taken offense to that. I just got them all hyped up. Man, that was fun."

Danny laughed and phased the guitar into Jazz's trunk, so it wasn't crowding Sam anymore. "Yeah, it was." He leaned back and sighed. "Hey, Ember?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you actually teach me how to play now? Since we're not on a time limit?"

"Sure, but I ain't holding your hand this time. You'll have to practice on your own time."

Sam looked between the two. "Wait, hold on. I thought this was going to be a short time deal?"

Danny shrugged. "Why not? As long as Ember isn't hypnotizing people into doing her bidding or whatever, I don't see any reason why we have to stop."

Jazz smiled. "It's good to see you picking up hobbies other than ghost hunting, Danny."

Sam shrugged. "Well, I guess when you put it that way." She paused. "Danny, is your phone ringing?"

Danny reached into his pocket. "Oh, yeah, I thought I put it on silent before getting on stage." He answered the phone and put it up to his ear. "Tucker?"

"YOU FUCKERS LEFT ME!"

Everyone in the car winced. "Oh, whoops."

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry Tucker.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The talent show was quite a success for Danny and Ember, but now life goes back to normal. Or as normal as it gets when your parents are ghost hunters and/or you're a dead teenager.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again thanks to [aniura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aniura/pseuds/aniura) and [HeroineofTime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeroineofTime/pseuds/HeroineofTime) for beta reading this chapter!

Danny put his books in his locker and shut the door with a slam. "Look, Tuck! I'm sorry!" he said, trying to keep frustration out of his voice. He turned back to face his friend. "We got caught up in the moment!"

Tucker folded his arms and turned away. A smirk was threatening to break out across his face, but with sheer force of will, he kept it in a stern frown. "I'd believe that..." He paused and took a deep breath before raising his voice. "If you had bothered to text me at all last weekend!"

Danny threw his hands up in the air. "My parents grounded me! I'm grounded for a month! No phones or video games!"

Tucker jerked back toward Danny, anger forgotten. "Wait. What?"

"Yeah, it turns out admitting to being taught how to play guitar by a ghost is not a good idea," Danny grumbled. "I'm so glad Jazz talked them out of checking to make sure I was 'clean' and not under her spell or anything."

Tucker raised an eyebrow. "How'd she manage that?"

Danny shrugged. "Basically, she kicked and screamed about how experimenting on me and running tests would traumatize me and completely ruin any chances I had of a normal life... I think... there were a lot of psychology terms thrown around. She mentioned oikophobia?" The statement came out more like a question as he sounded out the word. "I'm not sure... it sounded familiar, though."

Tucker pointed at Danny. "It's the fear of home. You should know it, dude. It's on the next vocab test."

"Do you feel like our vocab tests are weird?"

"Danny... our school is attacked by ghosts every other day. Everything in this school is weird."

Danny sighed. "Yeah, anyways. That's why I didn't text when we got home."

Tucker waved it off. "Dude, I was just messing with you. You guys may have managed to avoid getting swarmed, but I managed to get three dates!" Tucker smirked and gave himself two thumbs up. "Everyone knows that I'm your best friend, and there are a lot of girls looking to meet Ember. I bet I can keep the dates going long enough that rumors will get around about how awesome I am."

Tucker stumbled as Sam walked over and bumped him with her hip. "Uh-huh, and I'm gonna try out for the cheerleading team."

Tucker grumbled, "It could happen!"

Sam rolled her eyes. "Just don't take your phone out and talk their ears off about technology. Or better yet, give me your phone before you go."

Tucker brightened. "Ooh! What if when the date starts, Phantom," he drew the name out as he turned toward Danny, "shows up and needs to borrow my phone for the day to deal with a ghost?"

"One, no," Danny said. "Remember? We're keeping that low profile. Two, why would I even need your phone?"

Tucker listed off on his fingers. "Skulker shows up, and taking over his schedule again would solve it. Technus shows up, and you need a virus to spike his latest robot body. Ember does go evil again, and you need to apply a filter to her music videos, so people don't get hypnotized. Vlad does something stupid again, and you want to steal his files..."

Danny blinked. "Okay, so we're not going to _plan_ on me showing up... but just in case, can you set some of that up ahead of time?"

"Way ahead of you," Tucker said, handing over his phone. "This icon? Should send Skulker to the park for fifteen minutes of armor polishing, followed by a trip to the library to check out a book on poetry, and then fifteen minutes later, he'll show up at the mayor’s for a school project."

"The mayor's is twenty minutes away from the library," Sam pointed out.

"So, he better fly fast," Tucker said with an ear to ear smug grin. "The icon next to it? Triggers a fork bomb. If Technus is in the machine, it should short him out for a bit. Still need to figure out something for Ember, but you know how to work it for downloading files from a computer, right?"

Danny smiled. "Thanks, Tuck."

"If you really-"

"Still not using Phantom to boost your popularity to get dates."

"Actually, I was going to see if you could get Ember to do it."

Sam tilted her head. "Now that you mention it, we haven't heard from Ember since the talent show."

Danny shrugged. "Well, today's the day that she wanted me to ignore her, so I doubt we'll be seeing her. Anyways, the answer is no. You can ask her."

"Haha, no. I like my head without a guitar in it."

They walked into the classroom, a bit early for a change, and Mister Lancer looked up at them. 

"Ah, excellent. You three are here." He walked over and raised an eyebrow at Danny. "Well, Mister Fenton, I'll admit, you blew my expectations out of the water... but we also can't advertise ghost activities," he finished with a bit of a glare.

Danny blinked. "Oh..."

Sam marched up to Mister Lancer. "Hold on, that's not fair! Danny did what you asked!"

He held up his hands. "I didn't think I would have to tell a Fenton not to bring a ghost on stage." He calmly placed his hands back down on the desk. "Regardless of that fact, Danny did play two songs, and we recorded the first. It took some creative liberties, but we were able to send out quite the letter to the alumni association and managed to raise enough funding to cover the repairs to the gym. So, Mister Fenton, I am proud to hold up my end of the bargain." He handed Danny an envelope. "Jazz asked me to print this out for you. Something about your parents?"

Danny opened the envelope and pulled a report card. He blinked as he opened it. "C average? I got a C average! YES! I'm a C student!"

Lancer narrowed his eyes. "Yes, well, I'm glad you are proud of your rise to mediocrity in your school career." He tapped a finger against his desk. "Also, remember, you still have finals coming up. There is still a chance you won't keep that average. I recommend taking a music class next year."

Danny sighed. "Please, just... let me have this moment."

* * *

On the other side of town, Ember walked along a street. In the middle of the day, there were very few people around for them to see her. Not that many would be able to recognize her at the moment. Her hair was down and looked like normal human hair for a change. Instead of wearing her usual punk outfit, she was wearing a sundress. Instead of her heavy stylized eyeliner, she had a light dusting of makeup that brought out more natural features.

All in all, she looked like an average teenager who may have been out on a date.

There were two things that broke the illusion. The first was the fact that her footsteps left red flames behind that reached up and sputtered out when they found nothing to burn. The second was that the style of clothing was very out of date. She looked like she came right out of an 80’s magazine. 

Eventually, she stopped and looked up at a particular house. It was newer than the others on the block. It wasn't just the windows or other small superficial changes that would be easy to replace as the years went on. It was the style of the house, the floor plan and structure.

Tears began to fall from Ember's eyes as she looked at the house that stood out. Slowly, her arms came up, and she began to hug herself. Tears fell to the ground and onto her dress. Once they found their new resting place, they turned to fire and reached up towards their origin.

Ember fell to her knees and screamed. Fire overtook her slowly. Again and again. First her clothing lit on fire. The screams only continued as her clothing slowly was replaced by flames. The smoke from the fire flew away from her, preventing her from passing out from a lack of oxygen, as it always did. Instinctually, she tried to bat out the flames. After a few unsuccessful attempts, she was thrown to the ground, and a square imprint appeared across her back as her arms bent unnaturally. 

She continued to scream for a while longer, while her flesh began to melt. Her wails slowly died down into whimpers before the fire overtook her entirely, leaving nothing behind except a worried few who heard the desperate cries of the dying, and felt the need to keep their families close. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did tag that someone died in this fic, but not really. 
> 
> As for what Ember just experienced, that will be explained later in an upcoming arc, but suffice to say, the Fenton's don't know as much about ghosts as they think they do. The next arc will be coming sometime in December. I'll be taking a short break to write up the next chapters and get them polished before beginning the next arc instead of writing from the seat of my pants.
> 
> Regardless of that, thanks for reading this fic!


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